


The Seahorse

by Acid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1950s, 1960s, Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Parenting, Bars and Pubs, Bigotry & Prejudice, Body Dysphoria, Closets, Coming Out, Denial, Drama, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Eventual Happy Ending, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Gender Confusion, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Gender Issues, Gender Roles, Gobstones (Harry Potter), Greece, Grief/Mourning, HP TransFest 2020, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Leaving Home, Letters, Loss of Identity, Loss of Parent(s), Loss of Powers, M/M, Misgendering, Mpreg, Muggles, Owls, Parenthood, Post Mpreg, Post-Hogwarts, Pregnancy, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Spinner's End, Trans, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Transgender, Transitioning, Unhappy marriage, Unplanned Pregnancy, Wedding Night, Wordcount: 15.000-25.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:40:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23240359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acid/pseuds/Acid
Summary: Lee is used to winning his Gobstones matches, and he thinks he can come out ahead in the game of life. If only things were as simple as when he first met Tobias at that pub in Cokeworth. In a perfect world, he sure as hell wouldn't be pregnant and learning his way around a Muggle kitchen, but it's 1959, and he is all bones and weary mind, weighed down by the flesh that doesn't feel like his own.
Relationships: Eileen Prince & Severus Snape, Eileen Prince/Tobias Snape, Harry Potter & Severus Snape
Comments: 20
Kudos: 64
Collections: HP TransFest 2020, Trans in the Wizarding World





	The Seahorse

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the HP Trans Fest to the following prompt: Who would have thought it would be a game of Gobstones that got Character A to realise they were trans? (Also inspired by: Character A is a trans man and is pregnant. It's hard, but so worth it.)
> 
> Eternal thanks to Hippocrates460 and EveryoneInSpaceIsGay for beta-reading. Your attention and questions have made it a thousand times better.

"For the most part we are content to believe that we are what we are because of those talents and characteristics with which nature has endowed us, and because of the environment in which we have been reared; but that we may, being men and not animals, rise at any given moment above our bodies and our environment and assert our individualities."  
_Self: A Study of Ethics and Endocrinology by Michael Dillon, January 1946. Chapter II: Body and Mind._

  
"It is likely that your own eyes were closed when you were born, so that you left the safe place of your mother's womb - or, if you are a seahorse, your father's yolk sac - and joined the treachery of the world without seeing exactly where you were going."  
_Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events, #13, The End_

* * *

*

Some birthdays come only once.

_'Hi, Lee.'_

There's a mindset for winning. Sometimes, in Prince's soul, at least, it's prompted by a keyword. Like a password to the Common Room, like a spell, the sequence of sounds, a word or two, that makes you assume a proper stance. Elbows wide, knees spread. Feet planted wide, steady on the ground.

_Hi, Lee._

It all began with the game of Gobstones, Prince reckons. _How can it start with anything else but a game of chance?_ That smooth fit of glass globes on the palm, the easy rotation of them over the fingers, aiming, angling. It's a waiting game. (Prince excels at it, just so.) These glass balls are not deadly but they will hurt if exploded without a proper warning; drenching skin, eyes and mouth, with acidic residue. Prince is too good to fail, wielding a clutch of three in the left -- dominant -- hand, and they dance as easily as waltzing pairs, only not. They are a triad where each member is always in contact with every one of its peers, like a permanent kiss in triplicate drifting along a smooth surface. Yes, easy now, spin. Spin them all until...

_Aim. Toss. Roll. Fire! Yes! Again! Score!_

There's something soothing, carnal and chaotic, but calming in the endless destruction of acidic balls, colliding. Exploding time and time again. Squirting an unpleasant spurt of liquid in the opponent's face.

"So, um, hi, Lee," Callum had once said, inviting Eileen to play with the lads. "Ready?" And Prince knows it's a slurred "Eileen," but the duality of overhearing and the freedom to assume something else, makes Prince's heart soar as if Callum and Jimmy and Prince are all the same, a trusted pack, a team. ( _Aim. Roll. Toss. Fire! Score!_ )

Ever since that day, 'hi, Lee,' became a password to unlock the part of Prince's brain that makes everything soar, takes everything to the mind space where winning is possible. Such a painless, happy high that forces the best out of this body, out of this mind. Prince's long dark hair whips free, flung back, and freed. Prince lets a pair of Gobstones roll. Let them fly! Let them rebound and spin and spit, drenching opponents with aged, unexpected acid.

No one but the Gobstones Club members (Ravenclaw boys, Slytherin lads) really understand the moment of quiet, the anticipation of it, the rush. But everyone in this crowd, everyone in this room, does, because they know the high of a practised Gobstones player. They know the rush of the game.

Just for a second, Prince is one of them: just one lad playing an elaborate round. Elbows spread wide, feet anchored to the ground.

_Aim. Roll. Toss. Score! Yesss!_

It's not Lee's thirteenth birthday, not for a while, but why does this day feel just as special?

*

Aged fifteen, Eileen Prince is skinny and unattractive, cross and sullen all at once. She has her heavy, hairy brows, which she loves seeing arched in the mirror, despite all the teasing that comes along with them. She has a long pallid face which makes her feel like a freak in the Slytherin Common Room among all the rouged and powdered beauties.

Corsets are all the rage these days, a throwback to tradition. Eileen Prince refuses to lace herself up on display like that and yet, thanks to her unseemly features, or perhaps in spite of them, she's unafraid to face herself in the mirror. It's so ironic that from the third-year onward she hunches in self-defence toward any onlooker: her shoulders thrust forward over her chest, like folded wings, concealing her frail, feminine frame in favour of something, anything, other than the obvious. Let the robes hide what they can! She loves the angle of her shoulders, just as she hates everything down below. The mirrors back at Mother's house turn into traps, full of deception, of treachery. _They lie, they always lie,_ she tells herself. And yet she scrutinizes her own reflection in the mirror twice over and gives thanks to her lucky stars for not inheriting her mother's child-bearing hips. (Is it queer, for a girl, to be thankful for not having something a proper witch would surely want to have?) Well, pox on whoever thought of that idea, Prince never spent a second of her life as a proper witch. She feels nothing in common with being a witch, proper or not, regardless of how often it's used to describe her.

Sometimes it feels like keeping a secret, a big one, the kind you can't even whisper about when you're all alone against a full-length mirror for the fear of steaming up the crystal-clean glass and making it real with your breath alone, fogging up the pristine surfaces. It's the secret that dampens a pillow on a sleepless night, as Prince's eyes fill with liquid heat, Prince's throat is sore with tension.

The trouble is, Prince is... not Eileen, not in any way that matters. But that's impossible to even admit. The thought is a dream. A queer dream. A freakish one.

Prince is a freak, underneath it all. The realisation does not come easy.

‘Hi, Lee’... and then everything is simple, everything feels like soaring. Lee exists, as long as Eileen doesn't look down, doesn't strike up a conversation, doesn't glimpse that reflection in the mirror.

It's so simple to be Lee. If only for a while. 'Lee' works in all the ways 'Eileen' does not. It fits like a glove.

Eileen was Lee's great-grandmother's name, not Lee's, before they handed it down like a legacy, but may all legacies burn and this one in particular. Lee would march back to the dusty dining room, all the way to her gran's portrait and throw it back at Eileen Prince the elder, any day. Whatever's staring back at her through the glass, whoever's staring into it, it is not Eileen. It's an elaborate lie. Magical mirrors lie all too often.

Lee is also a Prince. Lee's always been Prince, he'll take that over Eileen any day. Out of all the names that others call him, it fits best for now. Better than any tailored robe. Better than a thin leather glove in Potions class when handling tricky ingredients.

Prince is a compromise with the world, but one Lee can live with. It will have to do. _What's the alternative, anyway?_ There is none, underneath the looming roof of Prince's household.

Truth is, Eileen Prince doesn't know what this existence means beyond a pair of labels, fraught with expectations, handed down at birth. And as for the latter, Prince, well, it was also a legacy and a surname one would gladly accept and carry throughout life like a crown. _Foolish girl,_ her mind calls out, _don't worry, you won't be a Prince for long. You've got a dress on, and a pair of high-heeled shoes, and mum's necklace of pure silver, and a working womb that bleeds, and that means you'll trade that name for another one day when Father decides. You aren't anything like your brothers. You've got a different lot in life._

_Well, fuck that! All of it!_

It's a tightrope of avoidances to be in Prince's mind these days. Minds deceive themselves so eagerly. And as an echo of that deception, people trick others into going along with what they've always known. It's easy, in a way. Days and weeks trickle by. Some unfortunate souls arrive at a middle ground where a crumb of happiness allows them to continue surviving, to keep on fighting from one day to the next, and the one after, and on and on and onward, for as long as Prince can see.

It's all this Prince knows. How can life possibly be anything but this? A gamble. A game... Games are familiar at last, Prince knows several. Prince is rather good at one.

Prince may know how to win in Gobstones but winning at life seems like an impossible dream.

*

Eileen is no beauty these days, but that is nothing new. When she first meets Tobias, she's not Eileen or Lee, she's... Jimmy. Lee hates stealing an acquaintance's hair to navigate a Muggle realm, but they'll never know, so doesn't that make it permissible?

The Muggle named Tobias Snape is loud and brash and drunk. He flings his arm around Jimmy without a care in the world. "Have a pint, m' lad! It's all on me. Have you got a girl t' go home to? Well, me neither. Bugger it! But, listen, it isn't how it - any of it - is supposed to be, y' know..."

Tobias' stubble creates a visceral reaction when it rasps against Prince's cheek. Jimmy turns into the brief contact while it lasts. _Are you my kind? A queer? A freak?_ Surely not, but there's something about the swing of that flung arm, something about the way Tobias moves, talks, and carries himself. A Muggle lad, full of himself but also broken, like Prince. That much is clear.

The second time Lee meets Tobias in that dingy old pub in the Muggle town named Cokeworth, he is Eileen Prince with all the self-conflict it brings. He doesn't want to be, but he is tired of wearing another's skin. Eileen has dark hair streaming down to her buttocks and an unapologetic nose, but there's a balance to that step, to the un-angled hip, to the wide stance. It's the same stance Lee uses when aiming a Gobstone toward the central target. ( _Hi, Lee._ ) Toby doesn't back away. He's Tobias 'Toby' Snape regardless of whom he meets in life. Lee's suddenly jealous of a simple Muggle. It would cause an outrage if Mother -- or Father -- ever caught wind of it. The irony stings.

"Hi, love. You're new here. I'm Tobias - Toby to my mates. And you?"

Here, among the Muggles, Lee can't reveal any of the names given to him. _I'm Lee,_ he thinks, because it stirs up the memory of all the best fairy tales he overheard told to his brother at bedtime, the ones that say when a boy wants something bad enough, his dreams will always come true. That's the beauty of escaping into the Muggle world with its quaint little pubs and its un-enchanted alleyways. Lee is no longer Eileen Prince - an unmarried witch staying with a cousin near Diagon Alley, surviving on a tightly controlled allowance - here, among these magicless creatures, Lee can shed past names, past legacies, forced identities down to the bare bones, and be free. Release the wand handle in the inner left pocket and pretend to be a Muggle stranger among the men here! One of them. A stranger in the crowd.

"My name is Lee."

"Leah?"

"Close enough."

Toby Snape, the Cokeworth mill worker, casts a second look at Lee's robes and calls Lee a proper lady. He then dips him, to Lee's surprise, to the sound of an odd tune, a piece of music to which no one but them is dancing in the dingy old pub. Lee doesn't know what to make of it. Lee hates it, but then... doesn't hate it, as Tobias pulls Lee by the wrist past the flimsy tables and buys him what tastes like a watered-down pint, slamming his fist on the countertop as he demands the attention of a barkeep. Lee lets out a laugh. This easy-going attraction, this connection, it's new. It's the closest Lee has felt to another person in so long. Perhaps this is all life can offer. Perhaps, this is as good as it gets...

They are only strangers, swaying far into the night to an unfamiliar tune. It shouldn't feel so right, so... vivid and full of existence.

_I'm just a lonely boy, lonely and blue_

_I'm all alone with nothing to do._

The Muggle music is quaint, recorded with no force of magic behind it, but even with the screeching overlay of the mechanical radio, of the electrical crackle, it tugs at one's heartstrings. Or is it only Lee's heart it captures and holds close?

_I've got everything you could think of..._

Lee's hair is loose. Lee's chest is warmed with more than the pint. The looming roof of the Prince family household, of expectation, could not be further away from Lee's thoughts right now. That's in the past, a whirlwind of Apparation and a long walk away. Lee, born of competition, of introspection, of patience to hold three twirling, hovering gobstones in the palm of one hand, is a stranger to that life now. Lee is wearing Eileen's robes, carrying Eileen's wand, but prior names and labels seem foreign and life, coal-dusted, and alcohol-warmed, in all its Muggle glory, is happening around him right now with such force and vigour. The present moment catches Lee like driftwood in its tide and carries him out into the unknown.

_I'm just a lonely boy..._ the singer's voice resonates out of the box on the far shelf.

Stumbling out of the pub, onto the icy street, Toby swings his arm around Lee, steers them around the corner, and leans forward for a kiss. He misses Lee's lips, clumsily, deflected by Lee's sizable nose.

Lee's heart skips a beat. _Here? Now? But they'd be seen!_

In the world Lee left behind this sort of thing would be unthinkable. Too brash, too queer. All is permitted in the dark, but out in the open, under the scrutiny of societal mores? But apparently Muggles have their own ways. Simple, uncomplicated ways, like the lives of these Cokeworth dwellers. Like Toby. Lee likes what he's seen so far, a lot.

Lee scoffs at Toby's second, much more gentle, attempt at a kiss, and then, with a narrow smirk, lunges forward, claiming Toby's mouth with his own, pushing him backwards until Toby's back hits the dingy brick wall. The narrow, barely-lit walkway reeks of distant smoke and the fumes of a burning fish stew. It reminds Lee of Knockturn Alley in another universe. It’s as if the street itself is a winding amphiptere stripped of its magical wings and forced to coil in the frozen mud. Toby's breath is warm and sour with his drink. Toby's jaw is covered with dark, scratchy stubble. ( _How do Muggles shave themselves without magic?_ ) It's an odd, fleeting curiosity, among so many things Lee is curious about. _Just how many other things do we have in common?_

Everything about Toby is colourless and brash, like the upthrust mill chimney in the distance. Lee presses his hand past the unbuttoned coat, past a scratchy woollen scarf, right against a flat, cotton-clad chest and there's a tremble there, in the middle of a wide expanse of skin, a detectable heartbeat.

_Apparently Muggles have heartbeats just as we do. Who knew?_

Lee meets Toby's glare, shivers with awkwardness at the wandering hands below his collarbone, and then, giddy with the unbottled need for something more real than the current reality, breath caught in his throat at the unthinkable act, goes for another kiss.

*

The fifth time Lee meets Toby down at the pub, they don't linger in the alleyways. They nudge each other, with the tips of their boots, with the sharp points of their shoulders, and start walking along the cobbled streets down, down, down, to the muddy riverbank.

The one-up one-down brick house at the end of the lane (Spinner's End) conceals the stench of the dirty river once the front door is shut. Toby leads Lee through the room with muddy boot prints marking the floorboards, past an unlit fireplace. It's odd how much the fireplace looks like the one he grew up staring into, the small one in the corner of the large kitchen. There is no Floo jar on the mantle, just photographs. It's Toby's gran's old place, Lee knows. Rest the old woman's soul. Gran, bless her efforts, had apparently raised young Toby since he was twelve. The house is still filled with the occasional reminder of her, a doily here and there. A handmade blanket of hand-spun wool is folded on the bed upstairs, a threadbare corner marked with a muddy, coal-dark boot print that didn't quite rub off.

Aside from that, there's plenty of dust and grime. There's plenty of squalor, to the eye of someone only used to going hungry at night without supper occasionally, as an unexpected punishment.

Of course there is dust, Lee chides himself, Muggles don't keep house-elves! Well, he couldn’t fault them for letting their dwellings get slightly dusty.

His footprints are left in the dust of the floorboards. Smaller and steady, in line with the prints of Toby's heavier boots.

Toby toes them off once they're in the bedroom, prompted by Lee tugging his shirt off but honestly, Lee wouldn't mind at all seeing him completely naked with trousers down and only those black leather boots on. What a picture he'd make, sunlit and sprawled across the cotton sheets. Lee would do anything, anything to hold on to that mental image forever and make it real.

Lee steps forward and presses his palm against Toby's bare chest. They inhale in unison as if the skin-on-skin contact burned them both. Perhaps it does.

With Toby here, right here, Lee thinks he is no longer lonely.

*

Lee's cousin Vinny seems tired and bored. She's a bit of a rebel in the family but the only one that reluctantly agreed to let Lee crash at her place until the worst of the recent family drama passed over and then Lee... never left. Lee's stuck on the sofa in her tiny London flat; an awkward arrangement, considering Vinny's beau.

He washes the dishes. He casts the dusting charms on the carpet and the furniture, every weekend. It's the least he can do, he reckons, to make up for the short notice and the inconvenience of him sticking around.

He has nowhere else to go, not if he's planning to stay away from Mother's house for the rest of his conscious days! And he is. He won't be missed there, that's for sure. His brother Elliot has the upper hand, the claim to the dwindling family fortune, which comes with many obligations, like fathering an heir. Yeah, Lee isn't all too pleased to consider the outcome of being responsible for that. Poor bloody Milena. Better her than me.

_No. I mustn't think this. When did I become so jaded?_

The Muggle world offers a welcome getaway. It’s magical in its own way: the glow of car lights on the streets, the electricity anywhere Lee sets foot in, the odd kitchen smells, the queer turns of phrase from the strangers. They are all so fascinating, so curious.

_Is this what Mother loves so very much to hate, to mock, to exploit?_ _Well then, she can come here and spout her hatred in their faces if she dares. It's wrong to hate someone because they're apparently less._

_Am I less to someone?_ It's scary to think it might be true.

_I want to be more!_

_I'll prove I am more. They'll see. They'll all see. One day._

_I hope I'll be worthy._

Lee doesn't think of Toby. Well, maybe just a little.

"You have that dreamy smile again," Vinny notes. "Come on then, do tell. Is it a boy? What's his name?"

"Why are you so sure it's a boy?"

"Well, who else would it be?"

*

_Oh bloody hell!_

_No, no, no! This can't be happening._

It's a foolish mistake, an all too stupid one. They've gone too far. He should have cast a spell beforehand but then Toby would notice the wand and ask all the difficult questions. Lee didn't pull back soon enough, lost in the moment's heat.

_Food is revolting. Why can't I keep my breakfast down?_

_Wait! I'm not bleeding. I should be bleeding. I'm not. How long has it been? Two months? Three?_

He is beyond stressed. He hates the mind-dulling mundaneness of cleaning charms and soiled cotton. (Just taking care of a wound, one that opens up monthly.) But the implication of the alternative - the lack of this jarring routine - is worse. _What if? ...Oh hell._

_It can't be._ I _can't be!_

To soothe his nerves, and to know faster, to just _know_ , he makes his way to his mother's house one weekend, and to his mother's potions cabinet as he reaches for a dusty glass ball in the corner.

_Holy shit. This is a nightmare. Fuck. What do I do? I can't do anything! Breathe, Lee, breathe. Think._

_I have to be sure. I need to know._

_It's not the end of the world._

_But what if it is?_

The dusty ball is the size of a Gobstone, but it's not a 'stone. It's only good at predicting one thing, and one thing only. _The future. His future._

_'Is it a boy?'_ Vinny's cheerful voice breaks through the fog in Lee's brain. Well, isn't that the question of a lifetime?

You are supposed to slide the orb under your pillow at night on a full moon. And then it apparently glows: blue for a boy, pink for a girl, or occasionally it's been known to light up a pure white colour, confusing the Prince matriarch that held it. (Great uncle Bertie whom it glowed white for has always been an odd bird.) Regardless of the colour, the experience of holding the orb ought to be a delight to all newlywed witches, but Lee feels like he's no more of a witch than a newly wed.

And still he must know. It's the only way to know for sure.

The full moon is three nights from now. It can't come soon enough. Lee can't risk taking the orb away from Mother's wards so he lingers in the house, grinding his teeth at the snide remarks about his weight and lack of occupation, about the absence of a proper suitor.

On the third morning, he sticks his hand under the pillow and holds out a sphere of morbid blue, the exact colour of the globe if all the seas had flooded the land. His hand shakes, and he drops it. The glow doesn't stop as the ball drops and rolls into a far corner.

"Milena, dear," Mother says at breakfast, over a soft-boiled egg. (Milena, Elliott's wife whom he met during his time at the Durmstrang Institute, widens her eyes and chokes down a slice of toast.) "Have you got anything to tell me?" Mother is much more content now that Father is away from the country for good - but it isn't a big change in Lee's life.

"No, of course not, ma'am," Milena mumbles.

"Call me Mother, darling." A sparkling spoon is lowered onto the tablecloth. The resulting pause lasts a century as Mother swipes a napkin across the corner of her mouth. "It's only proper. Now that we are your family and you're a Prince. Princes have no secrets from one another."

"Mother. I am so sorry," Milena says obediently, and the entire power display makes the contents of Lee's stomach churn, the contents of a late-night supper rebelling for a swift exit.

"Milena," he mumbles, whispering across the table, "don't worry about it. You see, Mum's obsessed with correcting you no matter what you say or do."

Mother's narrow-eyed stare focuses on Lee and Lee alone. "Leenie!" Her mouth is a stern and thin line of obvious disapproval. "Oh try not to talk with your mouth full, darling. And as I was saying, Milena, you do not have to hide anything from your family. In case you have wonderful news to share, this is the perfect time to... just among us witches."

In the corner, Lee's brother Elliott chokes and tries to look invisible.

"Oh, Mother, stop this nonsense at once," Lee, lightheaded, swallows down bile and continues to the point of no return. "Sorry to disappoint, brother and Milena won't be giving you a grandson today."

"Nonsense, Leenie, now run along..."

Lee grows still, his hands fisted over the silverware. His bottom lip bitten until it no longer hurts, just numb. _I have to tell her. Sooner rather than later._ "I took the scrying orb if you must know. It's back now."

Mrs Prince's head turns, and suddenly Lee is faced with a pained, shocked stare. "You! But why... Leenie? Are you out of your mind?"

"Mum!"

"... Oh. _Oh!_ I see. Not another word! That's enough out of you! How dare-"

"Mother!"

"Don't you mother me! Unless... oh, you shameless, stupid - this better not be - explain yourself at once!"

Lee takes a deep breath to keep calm, keep still. His feet are spread wide. His shoulders are folded wings, hovering over the rest of the frail, feminine form. He doesn't feel like anything at the moment. A piece of furniture, perhaps. A block of wood with no feelings. It'll be much easier to exist as that corner table than anything human and related to Mother. "You won't know him," Lee says.

"Try me, you idiot girl. Is it the Goyle lad?" Mrs Prince's face turns ashen, suspecting the worst. Knowing it. "How far along are you? Now. Spill!"

"It's not Jimmy! I said you won't know him," Lee repeats and forces his chin to just out wide, in the face of his mother's rage. If he sticks his neck far enough, he won't be able to see the outline of his chest, all wrong, in the corners of his vision. "If you care to know, he's Muggle."

"Muggle? What sort of talk is it?" Mother's lips twist in disgust. "I've never... well, that's hardly even possible, isn't it? These things are... they never survive. You're blathering nonsense, Leenie. And if you suggest that by any chance you've - ugh. They're animals! Filthy animals. How can you even say such a revolting thing? Now if you've truly got yourself into this disgusting mess, you're to take care of it and never mention it again in polite company! I won't hear any more of such outrage from you at breakfast. Now, about this tea. Dottie! Dottie?!"

"Dottie's here, mistress," comes a meek voice from the corner.

"This tea is practically cold. Fix this at once!"

Lee cringes and stays silent all throughout the day. He withdraws from human company. He shouldn't have come here, not after all this time he's spent getting away from the house, from its expectations. Finding a place of his own, with Vinny, bless her rebellious soul. He loves London. He can't get enough of it.

And yet, he's inside these dark rooms, in the middle of nowhere, where no Muggles would dare to tread. The house stands upon a hill, away far enough from any Muggle dwelling that the house-elves have trouble summoning household supplies, household food. It's contradictory, perhaps, to think of the pureblood families as parasites among Muggle societies but what else can Lee think of this entire scenario? The people he grew up with, the entire family, had been leeching off Muggles and their land for as long as he lived, with the Summoning Spells, with the house-elves harvesting the items needed day by day from the nearby farms, from the nearby households. Each item had to come from somewhere, be made by someone. He wonders then, just who exactly knitted that patchy blanket at the foot of his childhood bed, who had made the roasted goose at his seventh birthday celebration. The items surely didn't originate from magic, some were stolen by it, enhanced by it, some carried by it to their final destination.

Is he the only one to ask these questions? Would it be easier to stop asking such things and never wonder again?

But it's impossible to stop a curious mind. Muggles made the things he grew up with daily. Someone's hand, someone's time was put to good use, carving wood, spinning wool, stirring a pot. Was it someone's grandmother, someone's son, someone's friend? Were they sorry to lose it, to give it up? Did they even remember what they'd lost?

There was a boy who ran up to play at the gates of their garden once. His name was Jack. He had a ball that bounced off the warded walls and Lee held his hand up to the cast iron and could feel the vibration of every strike of the ball against the gate. Until one day, when Mother found them.

"Ugh! Get away from here, you filthy creature! Obliviate! Now, go on, shoo. Pay it no mind, Leenie, run along and don't forget to wash your hands. Muggles are such dirty mongrels!"

Lee was never good at washing his hands on command. Dirt gathered beneath his fingernails and smelled like freedom.

Jack must've forgotten all about their game. He never returned. Sometimes Lee thinks he's that lost Muggle boy, memories of making a friend torn away by a spell, as he's sent wandering into the woods. Perhaps Lee is wandering through life still, never having emerged from the labyrinthian forest. As if he's still wandering the night away through the Muggle pubs with their greasy fish and chips servings and watered-down brews, looking for the shelter from the weather and the warmth of a stranger's company of an easy acceptance among the crowd: sometimes as Jack, or as Callum, or as Jimmy. Just one of the lads. These men and women that serve Lee food at the polished counters, those blokes that share the place at the table, that sleepy old sod in a fisherman's hat who only has the strength to nod to the radio, they are not things to exploit. They are people. They've got lives. They've got dignity. They've got stories to tell.

How do people like Mother use them and rob them of their humanity, with mere words spoken, so often and for so long? It's a travesty, one Lee wants to exterminate in his lifetime. If there's something he wants to live for, it's that. Just that. To go through life with the strength of his two hands, with the wit of his mind, and his spine unbroken by the casual cruelty of Mother's daily tirades. He won't steal someone else's work and he won't rob people of memories like he was taught.

Humanity has to prevail. Human decency has to win. It's all Lee hopes for.

_Perhaps there's another way._

He has to tell Toby.

*

They're at a pub, and Toby sets a pint down in front of Lee. Lee shakes his head. "I'd best not."

"Oi, Lee?" - Lee's mind substitutes Toby's next words, in a familiar compromise of interacting with the world these days. "Do you fancy something else? Hang on -"

"No, wait - um, we'd best take a walk." Away from the radio, from the crowded, noisy pub. If Lee's about to tell someone about this, he'd prefer the solitude of an empty alley.

Toby drains half of his pint in one go. "Alright." His shoulders stiffen. He casts a longing look at the half-full glass. "With a stare like that, you're about to spring something big at me. Something tells me I will need all the grog I can get in me, yeah? You're not calling the whole thing off, are you? 'Cause I've even been looking at rings and all..."

Lee's heart skips a beat. "You have?"

Toby shuffles from foot to foot, standing in front of Lee, as he holds out his hand. "Come on then, whatever you're about to tell me is big, innit. So, before you say whatever you have to say, perhaps, a dance first?" A rakish grin distorts his features as he swipes at his fringe. "For old times' sake!"

_This is too good to be true, this won't last,_ rings through Lee's mind, clear as a bell. _It's too soon. It's happening so fast. He can't be in love with me. No one could love me, I am a wreck! What is he up to?_

"Hmph, if you mean what happened only weeks ago is ancient history to you, then..."

Toby blinks and responds with a disarming smile. "I reckon it is. I've never met anyone outta town, anyone like you, lass. Come on then. If there's a chance you'll ever settle for a surly sod like me."

The song on the radio is not the right one, the name he's called is not the right one at all, but still, Lee takes Toby's hand and leads him to the dance floor, with a few steady steps. If they're to do this... to have this talk, Lee's entire world will change upside down. But first, they'll dance.

_I'm just a lonely boy..._ The singer's voice rises, clear as a bell, in Lee's memory, and he sways to that beat, not the faster-paced tune they've got on the radio right now.

_I've got everything, I can think of,_

_But all I want is someone to love._

*

Long afterwards, after Toby's eyes go wide and then hopeful, after Lee sidesteps the cautious, disbelieving hand at his belly, in the silent side street just past the pub, they talk.

"If we are to do this together, you need to know something about me," Lee says, producing a Gobstone out of his pocket. "I went to a school named Hogwarts, and I played these. Watch."

With a practised move, he lets the Gobstone rotate in his palm and then float suddenly a few inches upwards from his fingertips, hovering.

Toby watches, cautious and clueless like any Muggle down the street. After a while, as he tires of looking from all angles, looking for an explanation to the impossible, Toby's eyes narrow, his heavy brows set in a perpetual frown. "Are you telling me you've gone to a school that taught you magic tricks? Say, Eileen." Hey, Lee... "You can probably make a fair bit of coin doing that at the pubs!"

Lee snorts, gripping the wand in his pocket. "Yeah. Something like that." He catches the stone and shrinks it to the size of a marble, letting the weight of it rest easily on his palm, before closing his fingers around it and sticking it in his pocket.

Toby's glare grows wary and his face betrays his profound unease at the sight of Lee holding a wand. "It's... not a trick, is it," he asks.

Lee doesn't know how to answer that. _It was never a trick._

His entire past is a lie. But maybe his future doesn't have to be.

Slowly, painfully, Lee shakes his head, vulnerable as though baring his neck to a guillotine, revealing his innermost truth to someone, no longer a stranger, perhaps even a kindred soul for the first time. _Take me as I am. Please, I'm showing you what I'm made of, don't hurt me for it._

"Bloody hell!" Toby's face grows positively ashen as his voice rings out in the alley, far too loud. Far too angry.

Lee made a grave mistake. To Toby, it's all a deception. A lie. He'll never be accepted for it. Not here, not in Toby's world.

Lee steps back, wary of Toby's sudden, stormy reaction. It makes him uneasy. It makes his fingers clench around his one precious possession, his wand. But how precious is it, really, compared to Toby's promise?

"Just keep that... magic stick of yours away from the baby, will you?"

It's a concession. A welcome one, for now. And then, it's Lee's turn to decide, can he live with it?

A gobstone in his hand has always meant more to him than a warmed wand handle. Perhaps he doesn't need this to feel whole. Not if he is made whole in other ways.

Lee bites his lip. "It's fine," he says. "I won't use this around you - or the baby - I promise. But you have to believe me, it's not something to be afraid of. It can help."

"Can't see how. Witchcraft ain't a godly thing to meddle with." Toby doesn't wear a cross but he keeps his grandmother's cross on the bedside table, Lee knows. "Probably ain't good for all involved."

Lee sighs. _No magic around Toby, for now,_ he tells himself. _Poor sod looks like a frightened cat and I'm not about to make him uncomfortable every time I summon a plate from the kitchen. It's not worth the trouble._

*

It's a small wedding in 1959. The windy day, with the shadowy glimpses of the fast-moving clouds seen through the stained glass window, is so unusually warm. The scent of the blooming branches in the central Cokesworth church garden drifts through the front door where their small ceremony starts and ends in a similar whirlwind as that of the windy sky. Outside, a car horn sounds, and the Muggle mundaneness of it is comforting.

Lee thinks of his broom left behind at Vinny's place. He never collected it. Muggles are… odd about flying brooms, and if he is to blend among them, he won't risk it.

The pews contain no wizards or witches, just a half-a-dozen blokes from the factory where Toby spends most of his week. Two of Toby's best mates from the pub serve as witnesses. As he asked them, Toby asked about that young lad, Jimmy's, fate but no one knew what had happened to him. A pang of joy resonates through Lee at the off-hand question, as if a part of him remains alive and free, strolling the Cokeworth streets at night as Jimmy.

Lee invites no one. There were no friends left to invite, not even Vinny. The first name Lee signed on the paperwork was short and illegible, impossible to tell whether it started with an E or an L, followed by a 'Snape'. Lee felt a distant shudder at that, a severing of old familial magic, as if the Prince's household doors and enchantments became inaccessible, forever.

He isn't sure which ones of the names are his to keep. Which ones are real. Toby kisses him, and that's real. Isn't it? This is what he chose.

"My Eileen," Toby whispers hotly, while pulling the white lace off Lee's shoulder later, when they're alone. The window in Toby's house - their house now - is opened slightly to let in the cooling night air.

They've been intimate before but everything about this feels so wrong and dirty and indecent. Perhaps it's just the newness of it all? The wrongness of the tightly laced dress? The pressure of a thin band now entraps Lee's finger, and isn't that supposed to make it all proper, make everything all better? Allowing for that ring to be put on was a conscious choice. A voiced 'yes' which meant a contract was signed. Is it too late to back out of it?

And still... maybe some things aren't lost.

"I really wish that you'd call me Lee," Eileen grumbles. _It's Lee._ Lee may no longer be a Prince but this name he still holds onto.

Lee is apparently a Snape from that moment on, but oh, this one sound, this one feeling, _Hi, Lee!_ \- a crumb of private happiness - it is his dearest of hopes, a long-lasting dream to hold on to and to keep. Lee needs it like breathing. Like the ' _I am a lonely boy..._ ' coming from the Muggle radio.That indescribable rush of shared reality felt, moment by moment, when swaying to the unfamiliar tune. And then, a shared breath, Toby's stubble against Lee's lips, Toby's heartbeat at Lee's fingertips.

"Ugh, Eileen, what's gotten into you these days -"

It ends far too soon. Like a slap in the face, although Lee can't figure out why it feels like an abrupt betrayal.

"I am not calling my wife a lad's name on my wedding night!" Toby groans. "What do you take me for? A freak? Leave a bloke some decency!"

At the outburst, Lee... Eileen... Lee... shivers and sags as if the draft has gotten through the small window, always shut and locked to keep the weather out and the noises in.

He never saw me as me. He only ever saw me as... _Leenie,_ Lee's mind suggests, in Mother's sing-song tones. _Poor little Leenie Prince, the subject of all the gossip up and down Diagon Alley, spoilt little lassie who bit off more than she could chew and wound up in a world of trouble. And for a good reason, that silly cow._

This can't be Lee's reality. It can't! He'd rather not exist at all. He won't live it.

"Toby... Love..." Lee breathes. But no further words come out. Lee's stunned to the core. How do you react to a dagger in the back? A curse to the chest. You can't. Sometimes all you can do is coil the best of you into a knotted ball, shove it deep inside, and survive by growing a thicker skin. It’s what Slytherins are good at. _Leave it, it's not worth the argument. Not on a night like this._

"Now. Enough games from you, woman," Toby grumbles. "I don't know what your kind has gotten into your head, but tonight you're Eileen bloody Snape, good and proper. See." Toby's large hand comes to rest on Lee's belly, with a gentle but possessive rub. "Don't you fret. I'll have you all taken care of, love."

Bile rises in Lee's... Eileen's... Lee's throat and the room spins. _Is this normal... for someone in this condition? Is it normal at all?_ Lee wishes he paid more attention to the dry anatomy texts from the family library, focusing on such matters... _too late, shit. This will not end well._

"H-hold on," he forces a desperate croak past his lips. "Wait. Give me a moment." Lee steers an uncooperating body off the bed and rushes shakily to the loo, already tasting bitterness on the back of his tongue. Lee's previous adventures at Muggle pubs make this part of the process, at least, rather manageable. Although recently he has had no drunken binges to brag about.

Lee's insides revolt, and much later, he pulls back from the cracked porcelain and pulls himself up to splash cold water from the sink onto his burning face. The water from the tap tastes metallic and brackish on his tongue, but it's better than the alternative as he rinses his mouth.

And then he lets the reality of nothing-but-Eileen seep like a winter's cold into his very bones, he shoves deep anything dear to him, anything real. _Hi, Lee._ There's a box in the depth of his mind where precious things go, where no one, not even his own troubled brain can touch them.

_Goodbye, Lee. Farewell._

It needs to be said, and it needs to be done. All is well now. So why does it feel like a funeral instead of a wedding day? _Doesn't matter._

After a long pause, only Eileen Snape ought to look up into the mirror, facing a reflection, as if examining an empty shell with an empty stare.

The creature in the mirror glares back in a familiar way but nothing else Lee sees is familiar, or welcome. The reflection on the other side of the glass surface looks far too young to consent to anything as important as marriage vows.

_You chose this,_ Lee tells Eileen the Reflection. _This is what you get to keep. You've got a baby on the way. Now pull yourself together before you ruin the last good thing you have going for you._

Eileen Snape, the perfect wife, is what Toby wants, so that is what he will have. Lee will settle into the assumed role, just for tonight. If that's what it takes to make Toby happy with the situation at hand. He takes a deep breath, releases it. Rests, counts to three. Drags himself back into the room he left so suddenly.

"I'm sorry, love. I'm unused t' it all," Toby rambles, sheepishly. "They say lassies get a tad emotional in your condition. Should 'a let it slide."

_Don't let him get a rise out of you. Keep calm. That's the only way to keep control._

" _My_ condition, is it?" Lee rumbles, locking stares with the man sitting on the edge of the bed and deliberately baring his other shoulder, allowing his hands to glide past his hips to the slightly curved belly. "And who do I have to thank for it, hm? Isn't it obvious which head of yours did the thinking that night."

Tobias' knees are spread. The outline of his erection is visible through the fabric of his best trousers. His fly is half-undone. His teeth flash in a pleased grin. "You liked it. I remember you did. You'd been saying my name then, well, you've got more than my name now. You've got me by the balls at last, I reckon, lass. Put the ring around my finger and all. Doesn't it feel good, Mrs Snape?"

It feels like enacting a sick fetish that isn't Lee's to enjoy without an agreement spoken. Lee's brain is screaming _wrong, wrong, wrong._ But he has signed up for it. He has. As soon as he had put the ring on, to have and to hold, until death do us part. Toby had put up with Lee's teasing at the pub long enough... Perhaps if Lee did this for him tonight, Toby would be more agreeable to let Lee, the real Lee, exist around the house. Once in a while, just for the sake of some breathing room.

Lee faces that challenge by sticking his chin out. It's easy to shut Toby up, just wear him out. It's all about timing. Waiting things out. _And I know how to do that. I can wear him down before he can retaliate, any day._

The laces at Lee's back are easy to rip open, as he tugs and sheds the expensive dress like snakeskin.

He licks his lips and faces the wide-shouldered man, while still clad in a silky shift, his manicured fingers, free of any jewellery but the wedding band, part Tobias' knees wider, asserting control. He frees Tobias' erection from his pants and that telltale hip thrust from Toby means he's won, Tobias just doesn't know it yet.

Lee is wearing lipstick and rouge for the first time in ages. His flat, straight hair has maintained some curls from being wound into the bits of ribbon over the previous night. Toby likes that look. He likes it a lot. So putting on this mask, this disguise, is a way to maintain control of the situation, around Toby at least. Lee can do that. It's just like Hogwarts all over again. The Slytherin House. The Prince Household. Layers of masks, a multitude of disguises.

Lee thinks back to being fourteen again, sneaking out into the corridor to hear the banging of the headboard on his brother's wedding night, catching a lustful moan through poorly cast Silencing Charms. His brother's wife was a prefect, two years Lee's senior, back at Durmstrang. (Not that Lee ever attended Durmstrang.) Elliot bragged that she had a lovely singing voice. She sounded lovely even then... Lee's face grew hot and his hand fisted around a smooth, slick Gobstone, with so much pressure it burst on its own, spitting clear, acidic liquid over his lap and chest. _Fuck!_

He takes in a breath to steady himself. He might not know much about the Muggle world but Lee knows his housemates, and he knows his brothers. He knows Elliot. He knows Edgar by his infrequent letters and that teenage boy diary he wasn't supposed to read. But he also knows men his mother described to him, that her mother described to her long before.

_An innocent turned into a whore on a wedding night. Isn't that all men are after, deep down? Well, boy, aren't you in for a ride._ Lee knows how this game is played. There's a different name for it, that's true, but all the same rules at the end.

If you've got no good options left, don't get caught licking your wounds. Never let them see you give up. Practically all the important Slytherin House rules summarised, right there.

And so he kneels. Deliberately. Intentionally, keeping his lips parted and licked, keeping Toby's gaze trapped at the display of sheer lace over his chest. He looks down, trying to comprehend the pure awe and arousal written on Toby's face but as he lowers his gaze enough, just to see a shadow of areola barely visible over the edge, he cannot comprehend someone else's excitement past his own profound unease. _It's bodies, for fuck's sake. Just bodies. Human flesh is a human condition._ So he looks up instead, at Tobias, scrutinising him as he's scrutinised in return. Toby's gaze is focused on Lee's nipples now, as his pupils darken. He is as hard as a rock.

As Lee settles on the floor, the white knee-length skirt pools around his legs. He never used to wear white. It's as alien to him as any of the Muggle ways. He might as well wear a shroud. Just a costume, as pristine as an eggshell. The one Tobias' absent mum left behind, alongside with the ring he's wearing now and a string of fake pearls encircling his neck. Toby's Muggle world is full of fake things, the dangle of glass and plastic and painted paper on the walls, until you find something real once in a while, lost in the rubble. ( _A doily. A blanket._ ) But at least all the lies are quaint, they are detectable. Lee lies too. How is his entire life not an act, the ultimate game?

Sudden as a stilled heart, there's a shiver in his abdomen and that's alien too. _A lie? A kick? Too soon for that. Surely. Doesn't matter. Hush, you little parasite. The sooner he gets some satisfaction tonight, the sooner we can all get some sleep._

As Lee presses his palm to his belly, Toby's large hand settles over the nape of Lee's neck with an unspoken urging.

_One,_ Lee counts. _Two. He thinks of the Gobstones hovering in mid-air, perfectly controlled by the natural magic flowing from his fingertips, the twist of his wrist. Spinning, turning, pulsating with enchantments and energy, in perfect harmony with his innermost self, with Lee's held breath..._

_And then..._

_'Hi, Lee...'_

An echo, a shadow of comfort within and a healing presence settles over him, an inner peace at the mere thought of that name acknowledged. An idea. A thought. A vision. A glimpse of existence beyond reality itself, that's not as mundane and depressing as this current moment.

_One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three... a melody, a pace, a tune. Gobstones, hovering, spinning._

Nothing is more powerful than an idea, contained in the shelter of a fragile cocoon, a layer of disbelief, of self-doubt, but then emerging at precisely the right time.

_It's my wedding night,_ Lee thinks, _but I won't allow it to be a funeral._ And then he surrenders the fight and lets go, letting Lee, the thought of him, exist, and live on, unburdened by having to assert his own existence. Assuming its default reality.

_One-two-three..._

A faceful of warm spray is as familiar as an occasional loss of a round in Gobstones. A temporary setback. Lee spreads his knees wide and braces himself, sitting back, baring his teeth in a smile, despite Toby's gentle hold over his hair.

It will be a long match. The game of a lifetime.

It may take some time, but Lee is sure he'll emerge victorious. One day.

He awaits that future with all of his being, thirsting for it. Wishing to be made whole.

*

He has to be six months along by now. _How long has it been? What day is it?_

Ankles swollen and back sore, Lee thinks of the seahorses, the males drifting across the sea, carrying their young in their bellies. And the thought of it, the mere idea, makes him breathe easier. They are rare, but they exist. He breathes in and no longer thinks of himself as a pair of eyes on sticks attached to his skeleton, all bones weighted down by an alien flesh trap.

Something attached to his midsection kicks, pulsates. A reminder that he's not alone in the golem of a body he steers around these days. Lee breathes in, accepts the boundaries of his body as skin-deep, far past the aching bones. It's uncomfortable to exist this way. He squashes the need to bring his hands up to the nape of his neck, pull apart layers of skin and muscle, and shed the weight of himself as a heavy flesh suit, infested with the presence of another, leave it lying at his feet and soar upwards, free at last.

He clutches at a Gobstone instead, its glassy surface smooth as a potions bottle. A galaxy of sparks swirling inside.

_Seahorses are real,_ he tells himself. _They're real, so I must be too._

_This has happened before today,_ he reminds himself. _It happened yesterday too and will happen again tomorrow._ Lee is used to the parasite kicking by now.

"Hush. I swear, little one, as grumpy as my grand-uncle Severus, you are."

The presence inside him settles. Lee hums.

_I'm just a lonely boy, lonely and blue..._

The melody doesn't come out right, his voice is all wrong, nothing like the singer on the Muggle radio. He tries again, forcing his voice deeper, but it's no use.

He sighs. Well then, time for a new tune. His mind goes back to the time when he was younger and all the Slytherin boys' voices sounded as high as his voice still does now.

O Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,

Please teach us something more,

Even if we're Helga's brood,

Or as thick as Gryffindor,

The familiar alien stirs in his belly after the cheerful tune. _Seahorses. Think of seahorses. Or Hogwarts. Or the Gobstones Club. Do not think of Mother. Never think of becoming Mother._

_Many humans and beasts survive giving birth. They even seem happy afterwards. If others can do it, why am I so different from the rest? I just have to think of it in a slightly roundabout way to accept what's ahead. I know what works by now. Seahorses work._ _It's that or hurl by thinking of myself as a brood cow day in and day out._

_Well, I'm not! I'm anything but that._

_Toby, the contrary sod, will probably make a heavy-handed father, or an absent one, but I won't be. You deserve a caring dad. Someone to take you to Platform 9 and ¾ when you're old enough. Someone to celebrate your letter. Someone to see your first magic spell._

_Hogwarts will be glorious and I'll be there to send you off to it and to see you do well._

Our skulls could do with filling,

(Less so for a Hufflepuff),

For now, they're bare and full of air,

Dead flies and bits of fluff.

So teach us things worth knowing,

And let the best House win,

We've a ball to catch: the Quidditch match,

Is about to begin!

The tune breaks the silence of a grimy living room. Toby's grandmother's blanket is draped over Lee's lap, its corners patiently scrubbed of any trace of dirt. _Yeah, I'm not much for Quidditch either,_ Lee murmurs. _You've gotta admit, it's a catchy tune. You'll hear it for yourself in a decade's time._

_Hush now._

There are parts of the day missing from his memory, blanks in a greying dull fog of existence. He's used to that.

*

Next thing he remembers, he's peeling potatoes in the kitchen and he may have finally gotten the hang of it. Tobias winced at the first few platefuls of the stews and soups served to him on the rickety table, but now he just picks up the spoon and finishes his share without comment.

They have enough groceries to last Tobias and him both a week, but the food is bland and boring. Lee's tastes are off these days, he's been craving olives and the jar of pickled herring from his childhood kitchen, the kind even the house-elves turned their noses up at.

He can close his eyes and taste it on his tongue.

He salts the potatoes in a mechanical motion of dispensing white powder over the pile of steam-softened cubes. They're almost out of pepper. They have far too much onion but the taste of it, fried, saves the day from the eternity of bland dishes.

_You wanted this. You chose this._

It's been months, has to be. He's not made any friends. The neighbourhood children shun him. He shuns the company of the Muggle women in the neighbourhood, such gossips they are. (He overheard them once wondering if the Snape boy had found himself a foreigner of a wife. So queer Lee must have seemed to them, that it started conversations.) He rarely speaks these days, with anyone, even Tobias, not enough to establish a presence or absence of an accent.

Being seen as a foreigner in a land that he'd always claimed as his own, makes him shudder.

It makes him want to find his abandoned broom and fly free, all the way to the Balkans if he has to, and never return. Perhaps it will be easier than this.

Sometimes it feels that all he can accomplish throughout the day is stumble clumsily from the kitchen to the far corridor in the morning and evening. One foot in front of the other, counting steps.

_It'll only get worse_ , his mind - a realist's mind - suggests. _Brace yourself. It'll get worse before it gets better._

*

It's November. Winter is almost here. Toby picked up an extra shift at the mill. He'll likely stop by the pub before coming home, like he always does. Lee wishes he was there too - who wouldn't want a quiet moment with a pint warming its way down. The cold has already seeped into their small dwelling, never warmed just enough by one fireplace. Lee is wearing two pairs of socks. He uses Toby's razor once a week these days to take care of his upper lip. Apparently pregnancy makes body hair thicker, and not just body hair. Lee doesn't mind, it makes him smile and makes him wonder how he'd look with a proper moustache. But there are more pressing matters at bay.

_Don't think of the cold._

There's something deeply dehumanising about one's body morphing in ways you don't expect. _Don't think of that either,_ Lee tells himself.

Don't think about existing only as a filled, used vessel, with the contents far more precious than the other sides of you. Unfortunately, dehumanisation is a daily routine. It's not the growing belly that does it, really. It's the words, the acts, the day-to-day dreariness.

It's the dishes. It's the cooking. The cleaning. The house. The miserable existence behind the door, between the walls of this Muggle place at Spinner's End. Lee wonders: is this my life now, is this all it is, confined to the small radius of this Muggle dwelling, condemned to live out his days in a few square feet of Muggle squalor? This can't be a grand life, by any measure. But could it, perhaps, be a happy one?

_It's been enough time, I should be used to it. I should stop calling things Muggle... they're just human._

About two months into their marriage, Toby looked around the living room, planted his boots on the coffee table and said casually: "Hey, you know, it's really rather filthy around here. Don't you think?"

Lee blinked, frozen in the doorway, a stirring spoon in his right hand, poised as a wand. His actual wand was upstairs, tucked away for safekeeping. What use is a wand around a neighbourhood as Muggle as this one, through and through? Spinner's End reeks of fish and rubbish from the dirty river for three seasons out of the year. The mud marks the missing cobblestones turning the road into a checkered mess.

"It won't hurt to clean up once in a while, yeah?"

_He expects me to do it, all of it._ The thought struck Lee with the speed of a magic-assisted freight train. And then - _a house-elf's work. This is what I am to him. I can't believe it!_

_No, wait. Muggles don't have house-elves. I'm overreacting._

He's done housework, occasionally. All right, rarely. Mother had forced every one of them to help the house-elves with their chores, much to Dotty's displeasure. But now, faced with no choice at all, Lee bites his tongue. It won't be of any use to pick a fight. He assumed that Muggles shared these unwelcome tasks as a family. He even admired the dedication of teaming up and getting by without house-elves, once upon a time. The patience it took to launder one's own items of clothing, prepare one's food, and to clean the surroundings and belongings was, at first, admirable, but now seemed exhausting.

_It's a routine. Just a routine. Don't think of it. Think of the seahorses instead._

The next morning, after Toby is fed his breakfast and steered out through the door to the mill, he brings his wand downstairs and tries a cleaning charm.

It stirs the dust, here and there, in the odd corner.

_Huh, how odd_ , Lee thinks. This should do more than that. He tries again. And again. He tries summoning his Gobstones from the bedroom upstairs and hears a faint roll and a knock of the single stone down the wooden staircase. _Thump. Thump. Thump._ He rushes past the bookshelves and collects it before it bursts. The strain sends a deep ache through his uncooperating body but the stone is still whole.

It's round and smooth, dark forest green, as if trapping the entire fairytale summer forest within. It's a Slytherin colour. Eileen's colours at school. Lee favoured greys and blacks once he came to realise he's Lee.

_Doesn't matter now._ He's grown to draw strength from the odd Muggle garments he puts on, a striped bathrobe and a silky blouse. The blouse reminds him of the fancy sleeves and collars that the richest of his classmates, the boys, showed off after summer break, hidden beneath the standard-issue school robes. A bit of luxury he wasn't allowed to express. He hoards these hand-me-downs from Toby's aunt as if they were precious treasures. He tells himself he's happy wearing them, because, for just a bit, they remind him of a home he lost.

Of a family he - must've - never had to begin with.

Of a family he still doesn't have.

He rests his hand on the protruding belly - he's wearing it, carrying it day to day, but it is no more a part of him than the weight at his chest. He thinks of his skin and what's contained beneath - the sagging, curving flesh all around his real self, as a suit. His spine and his mind are far too fragile these days to hold up the weight they have to carry, but they're his to keep and this is his to bear.

His throat is sore with... something, perhaps unspoken emotion, but his eyes have long been dry. He wants to shed the weight, step out of his skin, and out of his entire body if he could. But what would be left of him then? And what would he leave behind?

Hasn't he abandoned enough already for the chance at this?

Lee lifts his hands to his face and shuts the world out. Just for a little while longer, until an impatient kick - from the inside of what can't possibly be him - wakes him from his stupor.

_Time to start dinner._ Lee's mind that once calculated star charts and Gobstone trajectories with swift, effortless ease stumbles sleepily over the list of ingredients for a shepherd's pie. _Not as much salt this time... Do we have onions?_

_I... don't recall. I have to make it to the kitchen to check._

_That's so very far._

_I can't make it. I have to. I need to._

_Don't look at your own reflection. Don't look down. Look onward. Onward then. Breathe. One... two..._

He rises and takes a shaky step.

_I can't cast the same spells I used to, but there's nothing to be done about it now._

_I don't need them today._

_I have to wait and see. I just have to survive for a bit longer. It'll all be different once... Once what?_ He tries to picture what all the previous mindless months of carrying on in this body, in his own skin, have been leading up to. He cannot. His mind shuts down at the idea.

_Not so long to wait now. Not long at all._

_And then what?_ No matter what happens, this is his future now, this house, this life. This name. This existence. The endless string of days, of washing dishes, of cleaning up the muddy boot prints from the living room floor and planning bland meals. Of waking to Toby's snores and curling in on himself, too shaky and terrified of being accidentally petted - touched in all the wrong curvy places that are apparently a part of him.

He tries not to think about that further as he slices away the wrinkled, rotten end of the potato, breaks off a white, delicate sprout, and carries on peeling.

*

_Perhaps this isn't so bad. This is what everyone wants, Muggle or not. Everyone survives this. It's just a part of life. Breathe, Lee. Count your blessings._

They have a great big pair of rabbits for Christmas, an unspoken luxury for sixpence a piece that Toby brings back from the market on Christmas Eve, and its leftovers last through to New Year's Day. Lee cooks up a storm. There's gravy and veg and stuffing. With so many of Toby's mates out of work these days, they're lucky to not go hungry. Toby's lucky to have a job to go to in the morning. Not that Lee's hungry often these days. The sausages are cheap but he leaves the bangers and mash for Toby, occasionally snacking here and there on the tomatoes and the toast and a tin of baked beans. (They are out of eggs or he'd boil some. Lee craves pickled chutney, but he already went through the entire jar last week.) The sight of a rabbit Toby brought home in a heavy parcel, paid for honestly with his factory money and cooked with Lee's hands, fills Lee with something like pride, as he sets it on the table between them.

Later, his feet clad in woollen socks, ankles swollen, Lee takes one spin around the living room floor, as Toby directs him to the sofa, to the festive music coming from a small radio. He feels huge and clumsy and surreal, aching down to his bones, barely able to lift himself up from the bath on a random morning. He is dragging a body around, but it's not him. In his dreams, he is never this. Dreams are a welcome escape. But reality is sometimes, also, bearable.

The song on the radio is something he can dance to. The house is warm for once. There's now a crib upstairs and stacks of cotton nappies. They'll have to run the fire in the fireplace hotter soon, regardless of the collection of soft baby blankets by his side. (The old woollen one from Toby's gran is there as well.)

"Look what I've got you," Toby suddenly says, producing a small wrapped parcel. A box. Lee pulls the wrapping loose, opens it carefully. There's a seahorse pin inside it, small and silver and jewel-free. The weight of it rests on his palm, heavier than it looks.

"You seem to like these, so, here, have it. I found you one."

_Oh._

With shaking hands, Lee clips the pin to his shoulder, like a medal of honour.

He'll treasure it always. Shifting sideways, he hugs his unlikely husband and doesn't even wince at the feel of Tobias' hands over what must be - can't possibly be - his belly.

Seahorses are real, he tells himself. And now I've even seen and touched a replica of one, so this must be real too.

Toby's arms slide around Lee, steady and warm, and perhaps it will all be all right.

With 1959 passing them by and leaving, Lee is sure he won’t miss it. Perhaps the New Year will bring a welcome fresh start.

*

His waters break around ten in the morning, a week into 1960 when Toby is at work. He's living through a nightmare, like the black and white and silent horror film that Toby took him to see once, last summer. _Chamber of Horrors_ , was it called? Just like in the film, Lee is slowly, surely losing his mind. A deep ache settles into the marrow of his bones. His entire torso is an endless seizing cramp. Something is wrong. The midwife's name and address - the one Toby arranged for - is pinned to the calendar in the kitchen and it is burned into his skull by now. But Lee runs that name through his mind one more time and makes a split-second decision to forget it, not to knock on the neighbour's door and ask her boy to run past the market to fetch Auntie Abigail. He scribbles a note on the kitchen counter instead and weights it down with the seahorse pin. Afterwards, he makes it up the stairs, climbing on all fours, leaning against walls, until he finally stumbles onto their bed and reaches for the wand at the bedside table. _Apparate,_ he thinks. _I need to Apparate, damn it all. St. Mungo's! I need to be in a magical hospital. With healers. With magic. With someone who can help me._

_What will I do if I don't have the strength to Apparate, or even to call the Knight Bus. To get any help whatsoever! What's my plan then?_

It's not an option.

The liquid soaking his legs is cooling and dripping. There's something seizing him, a dull backache radiating through his core. His protruding belly is rock hard, like a lump. _I need to be at St. Mungo's. I have to. Go!_

After a dizzying few moments, he finds himself in a hall lit with magic and collapses onto the marble floors.

He remembers nothing after that. There are glimpses. Pain. Hands over him. In him. Prodding the places, the parts of him that Lee never wanted to exist. There's himself screaming until his throat is hoarse. He's just a mind and a sore, aching throat stuck in a howl for what must've been multiple days. Everything below his shoulders may be attached to him, but it isn't him. It can't possibly be it. His mind must've shut down and blocked out the worst of the bits. He doesn't question his good luck...

... until his day-long scream is echoed in time by something small and mewling. A small bundle is placed against his chest. It moves. The red-faced creature looks back with an expression about as pleasant as a squashed tomato.

"It's a boy," the nurse says. "You have a baby boy, dear. What will you name him?"

Lee breathes. "His dad wanted it to be Ernest, but..." He bites his lip and shakes his head, staring down at the squashed tomato he's supposed to feel undying love for but mostly he feels profound unease at the thought of someone's life now dependent on suckling nutrition out of two points on Lee's swollen up chest. It's too absurd, the idea, the thought of it, is so wrong, it's sickening to explore further. _Even the seahorses don't feed their young like this._ "It's... Severus."

He looks down. Severus' lashes are long, his eyes closed and his entire face is scrunched up in a grimace.

Lee tries to summon some compassion for the creature. _Parents are supposed to love their children, aren't they?_ "We'd best send for your father to join us, Severus Snape. I imagine he'd want to meet you."

"Snape, hm. That's not a name you hear often, where's he from? Yorkshire? Is he held up at work, then? Oh, don't tell me the Floo is malfunctioning again, that'd be a shame!" the nurse chatters, tucking a blanket around the baby, unasked.

"He can't come in through Floo." Lee faces her, daring her to say something, anything. "He's a Muggle."

"Oh." The nurse looks down at the infant in Lee's arms. "Nice strong lungs on this one. A fighter. Must take after his Mum. You know, my cousin's boy is a squib, married a Muggle lass... they're expecting their second soon. Don't you worry, dear, they say the children are magical more often than not in cases such as yours. I'll get an assistant to fetch your husband, dear, you just say where."

Lee nods in relief. "Just... make sure they're human, all right? My Toby... well, doesn't take well to being around magical beings."

Lee hears a 'tsk' ( _Yes, I know full well you think of him as an oaf by now, just get him here in one piece!_ ) but the nurse doesn't comment further as she rushes off to fetch someone to help.

*

When Severus is still teething, Lee receives a letter. With the screaming toddler on one arm, he opens the bedroom window to let in a frazzled barn owl, lest the claws the width of his best stirring spoon destroy the windowsill. "Mother is on her deathbed. Come quick."

Lee takes a scoop of Floo powder from his ancient rucksack and rushes to dress Severus into something more palatable than a stained, sour-smelling onesie. It's been a long week; he still has piles of laundry to finish.  
  
Edgar and Elliot are in St. Mungo's already. "Oh, hello, Eileen, dear," Milena, wide-hipped and rose-cheeked as ever, says. "And who might this be?"

Severus wails in Lee's arms.

"This is no place for a baby, Eileen." Edgar's stern features are unmistakably displeased. "Especially a Muggle. I'm surprised they've let you both through, they ought to improve the security spells around the place."

Lee clutches Severus to himself and stands tall. A testament to the security spells working as they should.

Edgar doesn't contradict him.

Mother never gains consciousness before her body, after a few dozen laboured breaths, stills on the St. Mungo's bed, the spectacle of her death attended to by the nurses with their ever-present shining wands and shining caps.

_They all pity me,_ Lee knows, standing there in a Muggle blouse and skirt, enveloped in a moth-eaten shawl like folded wings. He neglected to change into his robes, tending to his son, rushing out. _They pity both of us. They didn't expect him to live. And now they don't expect him to ever grow up to be capable of magic._

He doesn't know whether to feel regret or joy that Severus, a toddler, likely won't remember this moment at all. (Lee will tell him all about his Muggle grandmother as they retrace her steps through the house at Spinner's End, count her past possessions and their present blessings.)

_I can tell him anything I want about his family when he's older. Or perhaps not saying anything at all would be best._

"Hush, boy." _This will all be over soon._

_I want this to be over._

And then there's a jolt of warmth at his shoulder. A toddler's hand pulling at the collar of his cotton blouse.

Lee can't believe his senses at first, but there it is again, a rush of warmth, of pure magic, sent through his veins. It's given up freely, this gift. It can't come from any other source but the obvious. Starved for it, he doesn't question his good luck, just hunches forward, clutching his toddler son, and keeps on standing.

_Thank you, Severus._

*

Severus' letter arrives in January, on a cold winter day, just before Toby comes home from work, and for that, Lee is grateful. They hide it together and shoo off the owl. They both share identical small smiles at the thought of the magical secret in Severus' future. He doesn't need to go back to Muggle school, but Lee hurries him out the door on the next day.

"Come on, Ma!" Severus frowns.

"I've told you time and time again, don't call me that!" Lee cringes.

"You always do. You never say why," Severus grumbles, toeing the floorboards with his thinning sock.

"Go on! Get your shoes on. I've got plenty of things to finish. We'd best get your school trunk ready early! The robes won't sew themselves. You'll need my textbooks."

On the day before Severus leaves for Hogwarts, they stay up to play Gobstones in the living room. Lee rolls his best one when it's his turn and he's no longer a shadow of his former self trapped in a Muggle kitchen: he's a young man yet to grow up. He spreads his elbows like wings and grins when Severus tries to mimic him.

"That's it, lad. Chin up. Take your aim, just like I've shown you."

Severus shrugs his shoulders like a grumpy bird. "Ready to lose then?"

Lee cackles at the audacity of the boy. "You wish!"

It's the freest Lee has felt for quite a while.

The next morning on the Platform of 9 and ¾, Severus is aloof and eager to leave, a typical eleven-year-old with knobby knees and circles under his eyes. Lee is so tempted to lick his thumb and wipe them away, all the weariness and the stress swept away and made better, like the grime and the soot of Cokeworth air swept away once in a while from the window panes. If only he could manage such a feat more often.

_Do you know why I always stop you from calling me 'Ma'?_ Lee wants to prompt him, but this is hardly the time for such a revelation. He'll tell Severus when he's older. _Perhaps. Or maybe never._ For now, he shoves a bagful of his treasured Gobstones in Severus' hand. A concession, considering all the victories against a sullen eleven-year-old last night.

"Hmph. Where'd you learn to play so well?"

"At Hogwarts. With the lads... There were three or four of us around, we really knew our way around the 'stones." He pauses, just for a while, before admitting something personal. Something vulnerable and true. "You know, they used to call me Lee when I played."

"You? How so?"

"I reckon that meant I was one of them." Lee smirks, despite the rapid heartbeat in his chest. It's as close as he can come to admitting his truth in front of his son.

"Ha. An odd name, but suits you. Did you win?"

Lee slides one arm around the grumpy young boy and holds on, soaking up the warmth of that brief contact before Severus shrugs him away. "I did. More often than not. And so will you! You'd better believe it. Now, remember, spread your elbows, keep your feet steady, and don't flinch when you aim."

An odd warmth settles in Lee's eyes, stinging. It must be the steam from the train, that is all. It's what he tells himself as he lets go of his son, as he waves at the leaving train, wishing desperately he was on it, as a boy with his whole childhood yet to unfold.

*

Severus is fifteen and home for the summer break, not that Lee sees much of him. _He's a spoiled brat. Are all fifteen-year-olds like this?_

"Wait, let me help!" Severus reaches for his wand, with Toby just in the other room. _He knows full well how much Toby hates magic by now!_

"Leave it, Severus," Lee growls, as he lets the dishes soak the old-fashioned way. The way he remembers the house-elves did them when they tried to do the most thorough job possible.

"I can't believe you're still living like this!" Severus gestures at the kitchen. At the taps. "Father treats you like dirt. I always wondered why. It's pathetic. You're pathetic!"

Lee's hand forms a fist. He cringes. _If there's a time to strike the brat, it's now, fucking now!_ But he can't. He's weak.

He lets it be. He holds his peace and doesn't speak for the longest time.

"Severus, dinner?"

"Forget it. I'm going to see Uncle! And I don't want to hear anything about it! He's family." Elliot hasn't been Lee's family since Mother's death. Is he the one filling Severus' head with that pureblood nonsense? Lee worries. The boy is lonely and impressionable. But as with all youth, Severus won't listen.

"As you wish." Lee bites his tongue and growls. "Take my wand. Apparate from the alley."

A wave of Severus' hand and a flash of Lee's old wand and they settle it. In silence, like proper Prince family outcasts. Doing something they won't be swayed from following through to the end.

_Fuck this,_ Lee thinks later, with his son out of the house and his bedroom empty and cold. He wants a smoke. He hasn't smoked in ages.

_I should have raised him better. I could have._

_Where did I go wrong? Where?_

_Dammit! He's a youth on the precipice of life's choices. At a point of no return._

_I don't want to lose him. He's... all that I have. How do I get through to him? Is it my place to try?_

_After so long, I can't bring myself to tell him the truth._

_I've been lying to him since he was born. I can't ever make that all right._

The bedroom is suffocating, and so Lee marches into the tiny loo, closes the door, and cracks the narrow window open so he can breathe. The peeling white paint from the frame settles on his fingertips.

Downstairs, Toby snores soundly to the chatter of the old television set. Lee settles into their bed alone.

Severus doesn't return until morning. Lee has hardly slept as he hears the cautious footsteps and finally slips into a twilight fever-dream of a warm summer's night ending.

Nothing feels right, but at least Severus is back.

*

"Say, Eileen, is it that time of year?" Toby hollers as Lee takes care of the dishes. _Hey, Lee,_ echoes in Lee's mind, a late echo these days. It's nothing like it used to be.

"What?" he snaps tiredly. He's tired far too often these days. Summer is long over; autumn is settling in.

"Don't you remember, woman? We've met about this time o' year, yeah? Don't tell me I've got to get another tattoo with a date on it." Toby rubs his shoulder with a proud grin. "Well, I still remember the sight of you in that dingy old pub down the road. Such a spitfire you were. Still are."

It's the most Toby has said for what feels like weeks, beyond the grumbled thanks for the meals or the beer.

"You were a mystery back in the day, weren't you? Even said your name was something else. What was it? Leah? Leigh?"

"Lee." Lee wipes his hands on the apron, and takes it off, draping it over the hanger by the side of the sink, as he walks into the living room through the narrow doorway. "It was Lee."

"Lee," Toby's lips form around the single syllable as if tasting it, trying it on for size. "Was that it? Huh. That's an odd name for a lass."

"Well, don't wear it out," Lee grumbles. Expecting the worst, shielding himself from it before it even happens. "Have you got a pub in mind or what. Haven't got all day."

Toby grins. "With last month's raise, I was thinking, maybe a proper night out. A restaurant. Go on, get cleaned up, get your dancing shoes on."

Lee cringes at the thought of a Muggle dress, of a painted face, the heels, the hair, but this is what Toby expects. It's what everyone will expect at a fancy dinner.

Why does it make his heart sink so low? _Maybe... just maybe it doesn't have to be that way._

"Tell you what," he squares his jaw, forces a grin on his face, and reaches for Toby's hand to seize it first in a confident grasp. "I've got a better idea. Fish n' chips and a pint, at that pub down the street. Come as you are. All the grease you can handle, old boy, and then some."

It must be the grin on Lee's face that convinces Toby to rise from the sofa and follow.

Perhaps it's the promise of a pint. Maybe more.

_I'm just a lonely boy._

Sometimes, or maybe only for this evening, Lee almost prefers Toby's company to the solitude of his kitchen.

*

Severus is away at school when the worst happens.

The river is fast and deep at that section of the street past the pub. They never find Toby's body, but they do find his hat washed up on the shore. He must've drank a pint too many and miscalculated a step.

Or perhaps not, perhaps, the long Cokeworth winters were too long to bear and the waters looked slightly more comforting than the land. Lee can understand either cause. _Except all that his mind can produce is an endless scream: you bastard, you utter, utter bastard! Haven't I been enough for you? Haven't I sacrificed enough?_

Lee sets his gloved hands on the middle section of the railing and lets out a near-silent cry.

There's a deeper knowledge in him, that whatever version of Lee that existed in Toby's mind wasn't him at all, but still... they shared a life and a house. They raised a son.

Lee takes off the seahorse pin from his collar and sets it down on the metal ridge. He holds his wand tip to it until pure energy bursts through, heating the metal red-hot, melting the pin down until it's one with the iron railing. Inseparable. A memorial to one man's life, to another man's sacrifice.

He stays, still and silent, until the seahorse is cool enough to touch again. Tobias believed in the afterlife, but Lee knows better, which means whatever existed of Tobias Snape in this life is now gone for good, except for how Lee remembers the man.

With fondness, Lee thinks. _He's the first man I truly danced with. A great big annoyance. We survived a lot together. We had a life. We had a future_.

He releases a shaky breath. A sigh.

_I wish he would have understood, just once, what being called Lee meant to me._

He might have a pint later, at that pub down the street, in Toby's honour. He hasn't been to a pub in so long.

For now, he just traces at the ridges of the curved spine and the tail of a sea creature gifted to him once. The seahorse has a curved, bony nose, one that resembles Lee's nose closely.

_I have always seen you as you are. Always, Toby._

The man with his grandmother's blanket by his sofa, with her spirit in his house.

The frazzled, overwhelmed newcomer in a magical hospital, casting aside past fears and vulnerabilities, to hold his baby son for the first time.

The factory worker getting home after a late shift, snow melting on his coat, frostbitten cheeks flushed pink. A precious bundle of two rabbits is tucked under his arm: a feast during a famine.

The no-longer-a-stranger in an alley of a Muggle town marked by a mill chimney smiles at Lee in his mind's eye. Toby's heart beats fast and fragile under Lee's fingertips. _Tap. Tap. Tap._

_Farewell, my love._

*

The house is so silent these days, even though it's summer and Severus' school trunk sits abandoned in the hallway, no longer needed, gathering dust.

The red-headed Muggle-born lass Severus had taken a liking to throughout his school years (he used to spend his days on the long walk to her place across town) is nowhere to be found. Then Lee spots a wedding announcement in the paper and scowls. _Best not let Severus see that._

Severus hasn't been around. The boy ought to look for work, for apprenticeships, but nothing has turned up so far and Lee is tired of nagging. Truth is, the work is sparse -- in either of their two communities, Muggle or Wizarding. The tension is up in the sky and in the ground and everyone's wary and on edge, awaiting the brewing storm. _Something's coming, something big._ Lee can smell it in the air, taste it on his tongue, the bitterness of chimney smoke and coal dust. The crackling of the dark magic seeping through even the most mundane of Cokeworth streets.

He's been cleaning houses on the well-off side of town, but he can't find stable work either. He already checked the stores, the pubs, the mill.

In Diagon Alley, no one trusts a stranger with a Muggle surname.

At Spinner's End, no one trusts a foul-tempered young man with a sullen mother.

The house is far too silent. That is, until Severus strides into the kitchen with his boots still ashen from his Floo trip and drops a bag of galleons on the counter with a heavy clatter.

Lee dries his hands on his apron and looks up from the soapsuds in the sink.

"What is this?"

Severus grunts. "What does it look like? Money. You could use some."

Lee taps his foot against the floorboards. He got enough of a cheek from Toby when he was alive to stand for this behaviour. He sure as hell won't put up with it from his son. "Where did it come from?"

"Uncle Elliot."

"I... see."

The last time Lee and Elliot met for tea at Milena's urging, Elliot had been spouting nonsense about Muggles and the importance of pure bloodlines. He questioned thoroughly, hopefully, whether Toby was indeed Severus' father. Being a bastard but of pure blood apparently would have opened up some new doors for Severus in 'polite' society, and in the wizarding world at large, with the way things were going (to Elliot's delight).

They did not speak again. Although, apparently, Elliot had continued to poison Severus' mind with his vile bigotry over the years. Did Severus listen? Or worse, had Severus grown to believe it?

Lee bites his lip. _I mustn't yell. I shouldn't. Gotta keep calm._ "You _will_ take this money back. We'll get by without the Prince fortune."

Severus scowls. "'Get by'? Look at us! Look at you, Mum! Living in squalor like a complete Muggle. Or worse! Doing house-elves' work for Muggles. How can you face yourself in the mirror? Have you even looked lately?"

Lee hasn't truly looked at himself in the mirror for so long. He knows full well what he'll see in it and it doesn't make the act of staring at one's reflections for answers any easier. It's far more appealing to keep steering his bony frame out of the solitary bed every morning and get on with the list of chores for the day. To keep putting one foot in front of the other.

He knows what he is without facing a lie of a reflection.

When he doesn't look in the mirror, he is most at peace. Lee squares his shoulders.

"My brother's pity traded in for his control over our lives is not something I'm willing to settle for. Whatever nonsense he's filled your ears with, you _will_ return this." _Stubborn boy!_ Lee reaches for the bag and thrusts it back into Severus' hands. "Today, Severus! You're bloody lucky your father hasn't lived to hear you say this, he did honest work all his life without a modicum of shame, and..."

Severus' face twists in an ugly, angry mask. His knuckles turn white, with that odd gesture of his right hand cradling his left forearm. He's developed a new nervous tick. It makes Lee uneasy, but he can't quite put his finger on why. "That brute can burn in hell for all I care! At least Uncle Elliot and Aunt Milena aren't settling things with their fists the first chance they get. Oh how I wish I was..."

"What?" Lee breathes. _Be very, very careful what you say next, Severus. Or you will regret it._ "Well, finish it!"

Severus' face, usually sallow like Lee's, is as pale as paper. "I wish I had a father. A real one. Not this... joke of a..." he gestures around Lee's kitchen, past the fraying hand towels hanging over the sink and the grimy skillet sitting on the stove. Past the cooling tea kettle on the counter. At Toby's work boots in the corner and Toby's shifts at the mill, pencilled in on the yellowed calendar from three years back. "Why do you keep holding onto his rubbish? He's better off forgotten."

While his son's words had stunned him, stupefied Lee without an iota of the magic behind them, it's his emotionless stare that burns Lee to the core.

_Bloody hell, boy, you have a father right here. Had one all along! Me! Haven't you been listening? Have you not been paying attention?_

"Give. Me. That." Lee reaches out, striking swift as a snake, whipping his hand out toward Severus. "I'll return it myself!"

The galleons rest so heavy against Lee's palm. He's never held this much money at once. Severus turns, stiffly. His left sleeve catches, pulling up and revealing a glimpse of something Lee never expected to see. A curlicue of fresh ink. As ominous as all the darkness of the winter's nights leading up to this moment.

"Too late," Severus says with the sneer of a dead man walking. "It's done."

The galleons weigh Lee down, forgotten, as Lee stares on. The full image is revealed before his eyes as Severus pulls up his sleeve to his elbow. There it is, the horrible sight of a magical brand. A skull and a snake, the black edges have the distinct shimmer of a wizarding tattoo, nothing like the roman numerals of Lee's wedding day that Toby had drunkenly decided to tattoo on his right shoulder (so he never forgets an anniversary again) five years into their marriage. These magical tattoos don't fade as Muggle ones do. The ink shines on, dark and deadly, fed by the magical force of the wizard who made it. A mark of the servitude of its wearer, until death.

_Oh, Severus._ "What have you done?"

Severus' face is grim, his voice - grave. "What I had to."

_So it's true. They've claimed you and they bloody own you now._ "You've chosen a side, I see."

"Yes. The winning side."

Lee takes a breath, and it's like trying to breathe underwater. His throat is sore and his face is hot. "We'll see about that." He reaches his hand around the bag of galleons and picks them up from the table. _So what does a human soul sell for these days, Elliot, brother of mine? Three hundred galleons? Five?_

"Mum?"

_Doesn't matter. You can't save him, not anymore. He's no longer a boy. He needs to make his own choices._

Lee holds his head high and faces his son. He wants to strike him. He wants to scream and shout and shake the foolish boy by the shoulders and cry out all his rage and grief of the past couple decades.

He does none of that.

"I'm not your mum," he says instead, dropping words like gobstone-smooth river rocks into the endless current. "Never was. My name is Lee."

Severus flinches. The hurt in his stare is soon masked by wariness as the final pieces of the puzzle click together in his mind. He always was a quick one to figure things out. Lee didn't raise a complete idiot.

"One of the lads..." Severus murmurs absentmindedly, to himself, not to Lee. "You said that once. I never thought it was... this much of a truth for you."

"It is."

Severus stills, with his hand over his mouth. A young man adrift. Lee can't spare compassion for him, not now, not with that Mark on his arm. He isn't the boy Lee sent off to Hogwarts every year for seven years. He isn't the lad Lee shielded from Toby's anger. This is a broken young man, a monster in the making. Lee won't be a part of what Severus has signed up for, he won't watch his son succumb to this vileness.

"I'm taking your school trunk," Lee says after a lifetime of silence. "Also this." The money in his hand weighs heavily, but it's his only way out. "You're in charge of this house until I return, if by any chance you do happen to gather your wits about you and start feeling grateful for what I have left in your care. I don't expect you will anytime soon."

Severus looks like he's about to say something, something important and heartfelt, perhaps an apology, but then the tattoo on his left forearm throbs and darkens, and he cringes in pain and throws his hand over it.

Lee cringes with him. _So that's how they summon their kind..._ Growing up with Mother, Lee learned all too well how barbaric magic can be, but this is a new low.

_He can't stay here. He_ can't _._ Severus has Mother's tones and Mother's attitudes these days. A Prince heir through and through, his late grandmother's flaws oozing out at every turn. The way Severus holds himself and curls his lip passing the neighbourhood children. The way he acts around Muggle crowds, sidestepping them as if he's surrounded by filth. Soon there'll be nothing left of Toby or Lee in him. If Lee had to go back in time and do this all over again, he'd reach for quite a different item in Mother's medicine stores. Instead of a scrying orb, he'd ingest Mother's entire stock of lead-plaster until the monthly bleeding returned, and that would have been the end.

_Lee's life would be nothing like the one he's lived so far. Would it be a better one? What's the use in wondering? He can't undo this._

Lee pulls the apron loose over his head and sets it aside. He smooths the worn fabric of his dress over his sides and draws a deep breath. "Don't expect dinner when you're back tonight. Or this year. I'll be out of the country for quite a while. I'll owl you the address as soon as I'm settled -"

Severus looks up, his dark eyes wide. He flinches at the finality of it. "L-lee?"

The way Severus says it, awkward but accepting, gives Lee hope, and he cannot handle hope right now. He has to push it away, incise it, cast it away, scrub any trace of it from his existence, in order to do what he has to do next.

"Go on, Severus," Lee says, and then he is weak enough to slide a hand over one bony shoulder and squeeze. _He's a Death Eater. It'd be a small mercy to snap his neck right here and now. Fool!_ "Do what you must."

Lee's voice trembles as he pats Severus' right arm and lets go. _I have to let go. For both of our sakes._

"Don't keep them waiting."

He lets out his rage and grief only when he's finished packing. Holding onto the folded, dusty blanket made by Toby's grandmother and using it to dry his wet face and to muffle his screams.

He mourns Toby still. He mourned himself for most of his life. He never expected to mourn a son.

*

When Lee finally settles (in a small town in Greece with the view of the water, the cypress grove nearby, and a herd of goats roaming free over the hilltop pastures), he sends an owl home as promised. _Hello, Severus._

The reply doesn't come for a long time.

When it finally arrives, it's not a proper letter but a small parcel. Inside is a velvet bag as familiar to him as the back of his own hand. Predictably, it holds the collection of long-unused Gobstones he'd given to Severus all those years ago. _I can't believe he kept them, all thirty._

"Hi, Lee. I was never any good at these," a scribble in Severus' cramped handwriting says and it's so odd to see his name in handwriting instead of adjusting his perception to hear what he needed to hear all these years. "It's best that you have them."

Lee picks three bright tiny marbles out of the bag and unshrinks them. His magic comes in strong bursts now, like a singing voice cracking after a period of disuse. He rolls and balances them on one palm and they, dark as his son's glare, turn colourful, reflecting the sea and the sun.

Here, among the blazing pinks and the dimming blue hues of the sunrise over the Mediterranean, Britain's turbulent times seem so far away.

_May you find your way, Severus. Don't live a life you'll come to regret when you're my age. Please survive and, one day, turn forty._

_If you can't ever be a man that I'm proud to call my son, at least live and learn from it._

_That's all I can ever ask._

Lee never puts that in a letter. This is no time for empty platitudes or thoughts too large for words. He keeps the next letter brief and practical as ever.

*

They settle into a lazy pace of a letter arriving every few months. Nothing on Christmas or birthdays. Lee looks forward to the unexpected sight of an owl at his windowsill. Any large bird landing in the garden makes his heart soar.

The fifth letter from Severus breaks the pattern of practicality and informs Lee of Elliot's death resisting the Aurors, of Edgar's Azkaban sentence after the trial. Milena has packed up her things, gathered the remaining house-elves, and fled the country to join her sisters rather than face the society's scorn as the Death Eater's wife. (It makes Lee wonder about Dottie's well-being. Oh how she loved the Prince household! Lee hopes she is content, wherever she is now. He cannot help her.)

Thanks to Albus Dumbledore, Severus has miraculously escaped his uncles' fates.

Lee thinks of the Prince house standing empty and falling to ruin and does not want to return there. _Let it all rot._

He keeps his hair cropped short these days, and his suits pressed with a spell that is now routine. He thinks of a quiet afternoon drinking with the men from the village and of their handshakes and easy camaraderie. They play chess every once in a while and he's gotten better at it. He's even started following Muggle sports, so he's comfortable following their animated conversations about last night's game. He isn't fluent in their language...

He's as good at wielding the cue stick these days at the billiard table in the back of the pub, as he used to be with the Gobstones. A widowed waitress next door keeps flirting with him and serves him free baklava with his morning coffee sometimes. Where he works, a local orchard, there is only a single outhouse where he doesn't have to choose to step through the two opposing doors in someone's sight. It's a good life. A quiet one. He started feeding a stray cat, and now it refuses to leave his weed-filled garden.

Everyone calls him Lee these days. Hearing it spoken so casually prompts a rare smile from him on the street.

Next month he'll travel into the city and play Gobstones with the makeshift league of wizards and witches gathering from as far as one can Apparate. Their captain is originally from Glasgow, having moved here to be with her husband decades back. Occasionally, Lee stays behind after the match and enjoys a pint, talking about the long-forgotten Hogwarts days. "You'll go far with that aim of yours," she tells Lee before they part and sighs wistfully. "Aye, maybe even the Championship."

There are rare nights when Lee sleeps soundly without a worry in the world.

He considers returning to see Elliot's grave, or facing Edgar behind bars. _I survived, you Muggle-hating sod. My son, Tobias Snape's son, survived and we are the ones with the future._

He decides not to go. What's the use of dwelling in the past? He has a life here. It's a good life, a proper one. For the first time in many years, he looks forward to tomorrow.

*

Time passes. One morning, Lee sees a living seahorse for the first time, drifting up and down and rising up to the surface of the water. There are plenty of statues and carvings and pictures of them here on the streets and inside the buildings but seeing one float upwards toward his hand, tiny and fragile, reminds Lee of just how fragile and precious the moments spent in this world can be.

Some summers, Severus' letters arrive smelling of Cokeworth and coal dust.

It might take years for Lee to summon the courage to return to Cokeworth but he knows that one day he will want to go back. It's home. But this tiny cottage with a garden and a cat named Noisy Hitter, his work in the nearby orchard, his friends in the village, his quiet existence of one man by the sea, well, that's home now too. He is reshaped and made whole here by this new life: his hands are now calloused by honest work, his muscles - wiry with strength, his eyelids - wrinkled by the passing years, his forearms darkened by the sun.

The house on Spinner's End was a different home, an escape from the Prince household. A home of his own, with a bed and a kitchen, an environment controlled only by Lee's own two hands. He wonders if that pub across the street that he and Toby used to go to is still standing. He wants to touch Toby's seahorse memorial on the railing one more time, if it is still there at all, preserved and concealed by his magic from the curious eyes and wandering hands.

There are many letters exchanged between Severus and Lee over the years. Uneasy letters. Sometimes angry ones - Lee never resorts to Howlers but he comes close. Over time, the tone of the letters takes a turn toward content, informative, and almost friendly. Severus writes about the yearly menace of school children, then of Harry Potter's witless blathering in Snape's own classroom. ( _The nerve of the boy!_ ) Lee almost agrees.

Monthly correspondence helps set the distance, but also reintroduces them to one another. Lee keeps signing his replies as Lee. Severus puts down: 'Severus Snape'. It's such a change from the 'Half-Blood Prince' scribbles claiming generational ownership over Lee's old textbooks. The parchment of Severus' letters carries the scent of Hogwarts’ halls.

One summer, Severus arrives in person, reeking of Spinner's End and books, like a proper scholar. His sallow complexion darkens under the sun during his three-week stay. They share time in the garden and Noisy eventually stops hissing at the newcomer in his domain. Lee and Severus wear similar shirts with the rolled-up sleeves under the hot sun. Severus' Dark Mark is grey and fading and it almost doesn't hurt to look at it any more. It's just an old tattoo with a past behind it: Severus doesn't reveal the story when Lee's friends ask about it in passing. On the seventh day of his stay, Severus laughs, brief and cackling, watching a crow hatchling skip up the steps of the hillside garden and stumble, cawing. (Apparently, it reminds him of Potter escaping his Potions class.) Lee treasures the memory of that visit.

A few seasons pass, and there is now a small grave marker in the garden in the place where Noisy Hitter used to sunbathe during the final years of his long and joyful cat life. There's no change in the content of the letters from Severus, but his handwriting turns spiky and cautious one year. As if he's penning those lines and always looking over his shoulder. Lee wonders what Severus sees that he does not.

Once the news of Voldemort's Ministry takeover spreads beyond Britain, it is obvious to Lee what Severus was afraid of. The worst has come.

Lee learns of Severus Snape being appointed Headmaster of Hogwarts from the paper before Severus' next note arrives. He knows better than to celebrate the occasion. In his mind's eye, he sees a lost young man with that fateful tattoo in his old kitchen and his heart breaks all over again. The good years were brilliant while they lasted, but the past has caught up to come to haunt them at the end. His plea with the universe is the same as it was back then, one of a father worried for his wayward son: _please let Severus live and learn from this, at least until he turns forty._

It's not long after that fateful day that a parcel is delivered to him by an exhausted owl.

The magically sealed box holds something Lee never expected to see.

It's a regimen of potions for Lee's use only. Judging by the stack of parchment describing its properties and use, it took Severus years, maybe over a decade, to develop and fine-tune. Severus was always a genius when he put his brain to use, either with a wand or at the brewer's bench. To summarise a lengthy (and slightly boastful) treatise that Severus supplies alongside the collection of phials, they contain a Polyjuice Potion variant modified with samples of Severus' hair, which is apparently much longer-lasting than a regular Polyjuice Potion.

Lee looks at the instructions and then drops his own hair into the first phial, watching the liquid bubble up in front of the loo mirror.

_To drink or not to drink this._ Despite everything, it's still a difficult choice to make. A threshold to cross, the choice of a lifetime.

Lee takes a deep breath.

_Hey, Lee._

It makes his heart soar.

And then it's no choice at all. Lee toasts the remnants of his former self in the mirror and downs his first share of potion at once.

The changes are slow to arrive, several held breaths behind Lee's expectations.

At first his features shift, ever so slightly, his shoulders widen until his everyday suit is too narrow to fit him well, his chest flattens, his hips shrink. The fine hairs at the corners of his hairline dissolve into nothing, no longer a curved line but an angular one. Tight cotton now rubs uncomfortably against the head of his cock. A five o'clock shadow darkens his jaw. An Adam's apple protrudes as he tilts up his chin. Dark hair sprouts over his arms. His hands are larger, his knuckles are more prominent, with visible veins. Such a multitude of subtle changes, and now he's all Lee. The way he should have been. The way he should have been born from the start. The third brother to the Prince family.

_A boy with a hard life. A boy no longer._

A man who grew up at last, appearance catching up to his aging mind. He'll still be a decent man in this new skin, Lee hopes, as he stares at the loo mirror. For the first time, he tries out his new voice.

"Hi." _Hi, Lee._

The sound is deep and rumbling and it's his, all his. Instantly familiar down to the last note. It reminds Lee of another familiar voice. Severus'.

"Well done, sprog. My Severus. Well done!"

He runs his hands over his forearms, feeling the unexpected thickness of muscle under the shirt. His shoulders are wide. He is a few inches taller than he was. Who would have known that a few inches make all the difference?

Even though he could stop taking these potions according to the instructions, Lee knows: now that he has taken that step to down the first one there is no coming back from it. He’s made a choice already, by opening this Pandora's box. It's no choice at all, merely a manifested reality.

He's this. All this. He's Lee.

So then Lee pushes his greying hair back, checks his stubble and shaves his upper lip with the cut-throat razor Toby used to like so much that Lee had kept it around in memory of him. Facing himself in the mirror for the first time, Lee is in a place he never dreamt of being in, at this point of his life, and yet he is perfectly at home, at long last.

_Hi, Lee._

*

Apparation is as tiring as no other magic to Lee. Frantic moments of Apparation, gathering strength for another go and Apparating again: to Italy, Switzerland, France, and then to London, has Lee collapsing on the marble floors of St. Mungo's Hospital, as exhausted as he was during labour, all those years ago. It's no longer the third of May, and his brain tells him it's probably the early morning of the fourth of May. If he's lucky, that is.

The year is still 1998.

He may look much different now than in that skinny frame of a burdened body that never felt like his own, but once more, he's here, again, for his son. In a Muggle suit but a sturdy wizarding cloak, he's not as much of a spectacle to the nurses and assistants as he was in Muggle woman's clothes back in 1960.

With bated breath, he inquires about the victims of the recent battle. One in particular.

"Snape?" a nurse asks with a curling grimace of distaste. "Follow me. Are you family? What's your name?"

"Lee," Lee says. "I'm his father." It's the only truth he knows.

"Ah, Mr Snape, quickly now," she gestures toward a narrow, unoccupied corridor, at the end of which is a door marked by two Aurors and a trio of starved-looking youngsters arguing amongst themselves. ("Just go home, both of you, I can stay with him. It's all my fault I left him there." "Harry, we left him together!" "I don't bloody see why we're waiting around for the miserable old bastard to croak again." "Ron!") "...This way."

Urged by the nurse, Lee steps into the pristine room, so much like the reality he awoke to one January morning in 1960. Decades may pass, but it appears St. Mungo's hospital rooms never change.

Severus, his son, is sprawled unconscious on the hospital cot, with his neck bandaged up. He looks so frail in a hospital gown. His face is ashen and his bare arm displays a once-again faded Mark.

_So it's true. You did it, my boy. You finally did it. You are free._

Lee rushes to his bedside but is swept aside by a youthful healer in flowing robes and a lopsided hat over a bald head. "You're family, I trust?" The healer chances another glance at Severus' beaky profile and looks back at Lee. "Oh, of course, you are. Good. We slowed the spread of the venom but he has extensive nerve damage, and even in the magical coma, he won't last long. We need transfusions."

The healer sounds slightly insane, or perhaps that's just excitement and over-exhaustion talking. _So be it._

"Blood?" Lee rolls up his sleeve.

"Blood, familial magic, everything you're willing to give him. If you haven't arrived as quickly you did... Well, we might as well have been planning a funeral. This way. How are you related, sir?"

Lee bites his lip and then states his truth. All the truth he can give. "He's my son."

"Hm." The healer murmurs something indistinguishable to himself. "Paternal links give us roughly a thirty percent chance of success with this ritual, but... if there are any ways at all of contacting Mrs Snape? Mothers alone double the chance of the patient's survival."

Severus, you lucky sod. _Hear that? You're in luck._ Lee's grin widens. "I'm his only living parent, Healer..." he squints at the handwritten nameplate on the man's chest, "... Abasi. But it so happens I gave birth to him. Does that change your prognosis?"

"Oh," Healer Abasi says. "Oh, as a matter of fact... sir. Yes. It does."

Sixty percent chance. Lee will take it. He once won Gobstones matches with lower chances of victory than this. "What do you need me to do?"

He'll do anything. Anything at all, to see his son awake and well.

*

Looks like the perfect time for another pint. Lee has spent the summer in Spinner's End, in his old house which was transformed by his son into what looks like an extensive library contained within four narrow walls. Like a keeper to his hoard, Severus dwells there, by the unlit fireplace surrounded by the books and the stacks of newspapers, still sullen and hoarse and not prone to many conversations, with a bandaged-up neck. Lee begrudgingly takes over his old kitchen when he needs personal space, while things are still settling between them.

Severus is, and that's no small feat, alive and not in Azkaban. He is not forty yet, but he is, at least, learning. _Here's to small mercies!_ Sometimes the universe tosses an unexpected gift in Lee's direction and he'd be a fool not to appreciate what he has been given. Severus isn't perfect but he's Lee's son and he’s alive. He isn't a virtuous man, but a decent one. Lee is proud to have him.

"Dad, oh, here you are," Severus strides through the door of an ordinary Cokeworth pub, with that looming manner of his, no longer threatening now that Lee is his height. "I'd like you to meet someone. Properly."

_Someone? Don't tell me he finally got over that Evans girl? It's about time!_

But that idea is entertained for a mere two seconds and flies out the window when Harry Potter, green-eyed and young, freezes like a deer in the headlights after he steps through the doorway.

_Severus in Potter's spotlight. Fuck me dead! This won't end well. Will end rather poorly if I'm any judge of human nature, which I'm not._

Severus' lips thin as he silently motions for Lee to stand up. _Fine. Fine! This is the Wizarding World's hero twice over, we're talking about. Impressive company Severus keeps these days. And yet... What can possibly go wrong?_

Harry Potter steps up to Severus. Skinny and tall like a beanstalk, but looking barely of age to sample most of the pub's offerings, despite the Auror uniform. _Merlin's balls, do they recruit them that young these days?_ Lee is forcing himself not to glare too sternly at the young man in front of him. He was one of the three youths arguing in front of Severus' hospital door...

"Um, hi, Mr... Snape?" Harry Potter fumbles. He looks surprised to see Lee. What could he possibly expect, not a sour old factory worker the likes of Toby, that's for sure. That's ancient history, long dead and mourned and remembered fondly.

"Potter," Lee growls. Now that he can growl properly, in an intimidating manner. "Well then, call me Lee, son," Lee offers his hand. "Everyone else does, around these parts. So, how is it you came to meet a sour sod like Severus at a time like this?"

Harry beams, responding with a firm handshake, taking like a fish to water to the atmosphere Lee tries to maintain around himself these days. Perhaps everything, or nearly everything, might just be better than what Lee feared.

"Hi, Lee! It's nice to meet you."

"So, do tell, what really brings you both here? I trust neither of you lads are aiming to get pissed forgetting an old flame tonight."

That prompts a stiff laugh out of Harry. "Ha! Er, yeah, no thanks. I mean, no offence to anyone who might like this thing, it's just not my cuppa. I'm just here to help a friend. I kept helping out where I could, and well, here we are." His face lights up like a Christmas tree as he pointedly does not glance at Severus for a whole three seconds. _This case of newfound hero worship may not pass once the seasons change. How... awkward. Ironic, but awkward too._

Severus arches his brow. His stare says volumes. _Don't say a word, dad._

Lee beams widely and arches his thin, dark brow to match Severus'. "In that case, Mr Potter, we'll get along just fine! You'll see. I reckon a statement of gratitude is overdue. You've saved my son from Azkaban. Who am I to be an ungrateful oaf?"

"Psh." Potter grins. "Saving people, well... It's kind of my thing."

"Wouldn't dream of worrying when you're here," Lee smirks. "In the meantime, a pint, perhaps?" He recounts his winnings from a Friday poker game with the lads (not quite as rowdy as Toby's old crowd) and widens his grin. "It's not the butterbeer you're used to, I'm sure, but this round's on me."

It feels odd to measure the price of ordinary gratitude in pounds and pennies instead of drachmae. The conversion rates are as complicated as galleons and sickles. Lee has given up thinking about it. Even after all these years, it's freeing not having to worry about money - in any currency - and surviving the winter. In a world where he depended for so long on Toby's meagre earnings, the control over his own income is freedom. He still skips a proper English breakfast in favour of beans on toast these days, but when an Avon lady, a neighbour trying to get back on her feet after leaving her husband, knocked on his door, he handed over an obscene amount of change, trading it for a foul-smelling perfume in a seahorse-shaped bottle. ("Whoever she is, she's a lucky girl, Mister! Good day to you!") Lee disposed of the flowery scented liquid swiftly and then washed out the bottle until it no longer carried any scent. He then filled the small container of ornate glass with the next week's potion of his son's making and tucked it into his chest pocket. Just in case.

Lee carries the bottle with him still.

Once the clock on the pub wall strikes seven, Lee drops a piece of hair into the brew, which almost bubbles over, and then drains it dry, washing it down with a gulp of beer.

"What's that you've got there, Mr - um - Lee," Harry Potter asks, eyeing the tiny ornate flask, and Lee hands the empty seahorse over for the examination.

"Medicine," Lee says. "Changed my life once, all thanks to Severus. He made it possible."

He meets Severus' eye and the stare that greets him over the width of a flimsy table is warm and satisfied.

Severus' mouth twitches over the rim of his glass. He's much more used to Muggle spaces now than when he was a teen. Lee is glad Severus inherited this side of him, even if it took a while to emerge. Severus' voice is still gruff from his injury as he breathes quietly: "We're even."

*

During the Gobstones Championship in London, Lee spooks a newcomer, youngish, round-faced and short-haired, with a hoodie over his head and chest not quite flat enough, about to head through the door into men's. So he's like Lee used to be, and at the same time not. A boy stuck in a panicked in-between, about a year into growing up, but later in life. Lee strides forward and tells himself to keep calm. The lad looks back at him with panic and is about to sidestep, back off into a corner, past that one door with a distinct sign. Lee cringes, feeling an old wound opening up, remembers himself under familiar scrutiny, making similar decisions. He didn't have to make that choice often, back when he lived in Greece, thank Merlin.

"After you, son," he gestures. The loos are right here. And then Lee smiles to himself and the lad's obliviousness as the boy blinks, as the recognition dawns on his face: _you know what I am. Oh shit! But... wait, you're a friend._

Lee smirks to himself. There's something validating yet disturbing about blending in with the crowd to the point of where even your own kind doesn't recognise you as a kindred spirit.

He hums a radio tune from the late 1950s as he washes his hands and then exits to the Muggle side of this pub, returning to the din of footy fans as the telly broadcaster drones on about the game. He still prefers Quidditch, but it's a close call.

He grasps a shrunken Gobstone in his pocket and turns it like a plain marble, a trinket.

"Oi, son?"

The lad's posture is awkward. His wary smile though, well, that is worth a thousand words. "Yeah? Wait... aren't you? Lee Snape. You are! I've placed a bet on you! Before tomorrow."

"You did? Well, then..." Lee smiles. "Catch!"

The lad grins up at him, fingers snatching the forest-coloured marble from mid-air, quick as a Seeker bringing his team to victory. Lee nods in approval. There's much to be said for the Seekers appreciating a different sport.

Perhaps, if not that stubborn son of his, the children, the new generation, will turn out alright.

Lee has to believe that.

*

'Hi, Lee,' Lee thinks to himself the next day, and his name echoes and turns everything steady and solid, it takes him to the mind space where winning is possible. Such anchored reality makes him strive for more, for better, always for the best. Lee's grown-out fringe is flung back, as he lets a pair of Gobstones roll. Let them fly! Let them rebound and spin and spit, drenching his opponents with acid.

The small crowd watching the game goes wild. No one but his opponent (Kevin 'Gobstone Gunk in the Eye' Hopwood) understands this moment of quiet, the anticipation of it, the rush, better than he does. But this whole crowd, everyone in this hall, knows, because they know the high of a practised Gobstones player. They know the call of the game.

For a second, Lee is one with the crowd. He's just one bloke, playing an elaborate round to the inevitable victory. He spreads his elbows and anchors his feet to the ground. Across from him, the blond, bearded wizard grins. _Not for long._ Lee knows he's winning. He will win this yet. He's won matches against far worse odds.

_Aim. Roll. Toss. Score! Yesss!_

The small crowd of supporters chant a name. His name.

_Lee. Lee. Lee!_

Lee looks back, seeking Severus out.

Severus is there, with a skinny, green-eyed youth staying patiently by his side. (Why? A mystery for the ages. Potter, a Quidditch player through and through, is the last person Lee would have thought would be interested in a professional Gobstones championship, but here he is. Perhaps it's obscurity Potter is after. Disappearing in the crowd as no one, as one of the lads. Lee knows such an urge all too well.)

"Lee!" Severus mouths, with the chanting of the spectators, on and on, and Lee's heart soars.

_One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three..._ a melody, a pace, a tune. Gobstones, hovering, spinning, perfectly suspended...

_Aim. Roll. Toss. Score!_

_Yes!_

The End

* * *

"Come now, be content.  
I will come back to you, I swear I will;  
And you will know me still.  
I shall be only a little taller  
Than when I went."  
_Edna St. Vincent Millay_

"For the sake of all the others who are like you, but less strong and less gifted perhaps, many of them, it's up to you to have the courage to make good."  
_Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness_

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Notes**
> 
> In this story (cross-generational impact of bigotry and xenophobia aside), I wanted to explore one trans man's survival in a gender-binary society of the 1950-1990s U.K. 
> 
> While the Muggle world had [Michael Dillon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dillon) as a hidden trailblazer, someone born into the life of Lee Prince around the same time would have had no awareness of other trans men and would have had to reconstruct his identity from crumbs of belonging and gender euphoria. Overall, I wanted to portray the deepest of closets and the survival techniques that emerge from such a brainwashed existence.
> 
> I also wanted to explore the complexity of flawed human relationships and commitments and the stories people tell themselves (Tobias and Lee) to feel good about their lives, and how often such narratives deviate from the fairytale versions of happy endings.
> 
> In a sense, this story is the polar opposite of the mpreg trope and is probably the only 'mpreg' story I'll ever write. It's also as close to body horror as I will probably ever get to portraying. In addition, it pits culture clash against the conflict of unacknowledged gender dysphoria, which basically leaves Lee confused and uncertain for a couple decades of his life.
> 
> [Lonely Boy by Paul Anka](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxVkouHglGY) was #20 in the 1959 chart of popular British hits.
> 
> Many liberties were taken with Gobstones as a game and Jareth the Goblin King, the master of [contact juggling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_juggling), approves of all such deviations from canon.
> 
> [Vintage Avon seahorse perfume bottles](https://www.etsy.com/search?q=seahorse%20avon) are a thing. [Gender neutral toilets around the Greek countryside](https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/toilet-road-outside-greece.html) are apparently, also, a thing.
> 
> Diachylon, aka [lead-plaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diachylon), was often used as an abortifacient in 1800s U.K.
> 
> There was a whole lot of [potatoes served](https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Food-in-Britain-in-the-1950s-1960s/) in 1950-60s U.K. 
> 
> RIP, [Noisy Hitter](https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Noisy_Hitter) the stray. You were the best companion a lonely wizard could wish for.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Seahorse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27397003) by [emyn ab morlan (gwenynnefydd)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenynnefydd/pseuds/emyn%20ab%20morlan)




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